guns in america essay

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• Published: 10 December 2019

The psychology of guns: risk, fear, and motivated reasoning

• Joseph M. Pierre 1  

Palgrave Communications volume  5 , Article number:  159 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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The gun debate in America is often framed as a stand-off between two immutable positions with little potential to move ahead with meaningful legislative reform. Attempts to resolve this impasse have been thwarted by thinking about gun ownership attitudes as based on rational choice economics instead of considering the broader socio-cultural meanings of guns. In this essay, an additional psychological perspective is offered that highlights how concerns about victimization and mass shootings within a shared culture of fear can drive cognitive bias and motivated reasoning on both sides of the gun debate. Despite common fears, differences in attitudes and feelings about guns themselves manifest in variable degrees of support for or opposition to gun control legislation that are often exaggerated within caricatured depictions of polarization. A psychological perspective suggests that consensus on gun legislation reform can be achieved through understanding differences and diversity on both sides of the debate, working within a common middle ground, and more research to resolve ambiguities about how best to minimize fear while maximizing personal and public safety.

Discounting risk

Do guns kill people or do people kill people? Answers to that riddle draw a bright line between two sides of a caricatured debate about guns in polarized America. One side believes that guns are a menace to public safety, while the other believes that they are an essential tool of self-preservation. One side cannot fathom why more gun control legislation has not been passed in the wake of a disturbing rise in mass shootings in the US and eyes Australia’s 1996 sweeping gun reform and New Zealand’s more recent restrictions with envy. The other, backed by the Constitutional right to bear arms and the powerful lobby of the National Rifle Association (NRA), fears the slippery slope of legislative change and refuses to yield an inch while threatening, “I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands”. With the nation at an impasse, meaningful federal gun legislation aimed at reducing firearm violence remains elusive.

Despite the 1996 Dickey Amendment’s restriction of federal funding for research on gun violence by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Rostron, 2018 ), more than 30 years of public health research supports thinking of guns as statistically more of a personal hazard than a benefit. Case-control studies have repeatedly found that gun ownership is associated with an increased risk of gun-related homicide or suicide occurring in the home (Kellermann and Reay, 1986 ; Kellermann et al., 1993 ; Cummings and Koepsell, 1998 ; Wiebe, 2003 ; Dahlberg et al., 2004 ; Hemenway, 2011 ; Anglemeyer et al., 2014 ). For homicides, the association is largely driven by gun-related violence committed by family members and other acquaintances, not strangers (Kellermann et al., 1993 , 1998 ; Wiebe, 2003 ).

If having a gun increases the risk of gun-related violent death in the home, why do people choose to own guns? To date, the prevailing answer from the public health literature has been seemingly based on a knowledge deficit model that assumes that gun owners are unaware of risks and that repeated warnings about “overwhelming evidence” of “the health risk of a gun in the home [being] greater than the benefit” (Hemenway, 2011 ) should therefore decrease gun ownership and increase support for gun legislation reform. And yet, the rate of US households with guns has held steady for two decades (Smith and Son, 2015 ) with owners amassing an increasing number of guns such that the total civilian stock has risen to some 265 million firearms (Azrael et al., 2017 ). This disparity suggests that the knowledge deficit model is inadequate to explain or modify gun ownership.

In contrast to the premise that people weigh the risks and benefits of their behavior based on “rational choice economics” (Kahan and Braman, 2003 ), nearly 50 years of psychology and behavioral economics research has instead painted a picture of human decision-making as a less than rational process based on cognitive short-cuts (“availability heuristics”) and other error-prone cognitive biases (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974 ; Kunda, 1990 ; Haselton and Nettle, 2006 ; Hibert, 2012 ). As a result, “consequentialist” approaches to promoting healthier choices are often ineffective. Following this perspective, recent public health efforts have moved beyond educational campaigns to apply an understanding of the psychology of risky behavior to strike a balance between regulation and behavioral “nudges” aimed at reducing harmful practices like smoking, unhealthy eating, texting while driving, and vaccine refusal (Atchley et al., 2011 ; Hansen et al., 2016 ; Matjasko et al., 2016 ; Pluviano et al., 2017 ).

A similar public health approach aimed at reducing gun violence should take into account how gun owners discount the risks of ownership according to cognitive biases and motivated reasoning. For example, cognitive dissonance may lead those who already own guns to turn a blind eye to research findings about the dangers of ownership. Optimism bias, the general tendency of individuals to overestimate good outcomes and underestimate bad outcomes, can likewise make it easy to disregard dangers by externalizing them to others. The risk of suicide can therefore be dismissed out of hand based on the rationale that “it will never happen to me,” while the risk of homicide can be discounted based on demographic factors. Kleck and Gertz ( 1998 ) noted that membership in street gangs and drug dealing might be important confounds of risk in case control studies, just as unsafe storage practices such as keeping a firearm loaded and unlocked may be another (Kellerman et al., 1993 ). Other studies have found that the homicide risk associated with guns in the home is greater for women compared to men and for non-whites compared to whites (Wiebe, 2003 ). Consequently, white men—by far the largest demographic that owns guns—might be especially likely to think of themselves as immune to the risks of gun ownership and, through confirmation bias, cherry-pick the data to support pre-existing intuitions and fuel motivated disbelief about guns. These testable hypotheses warrant examination in future research aimed at understanding the psychology of gun ownership and crafting public health approaches to curbing gun violence.

Still, while the role of cognitive biases should be integrated into a psychological understanding of attitudes towards gun ownership, cognitive biases are universal liabilities that fall short of explaining why some people might “employ” them as a part of motivated reasoning to support ownership or to oppose gun reform. To understand the underlying motivation that drives cognitive bias, a deeper analysis of why people own guns is required. In the introductory essay to this journal’s series on “What Guns Mean,” Metzl ( 2019 ) noted that public health efforts to reduce firearm ownership have failed to “address beliefs about guns among people who own them”. In a follow-up piece, Galea and Abdalla ( 2019 ) likewise suggested that the gun debate is complicated by the fact that “knowledge and values do not align” and that “these values create an impasse, one where knowing is not enough” (Galea and Abdalla, 2019 ). Indeed, these and other authors (Kahan and Braman, 2003 ; Braman and Kahan, 2006 ; Pierre, 2015 ; Kalesan et al., 2016 ) have enumerated myriad beliefs and values, related to the different “symbolic lives” and “social meanings” of firearms both within and outside of “gun culture” that drive polarized attitudes towards gun ownership in the US. This essay attempts to further explore the meaning of guns from a psychological perspective.

Fear and gun ownership

Modern psychological understanding of human decision-making has moved beyond availability heuristics and cognitive biases to integrate the role of emotion and affect. Several related models including the “risk-as-feelings hypothesis” (Loewenstein et al., 2001 ), the “affect heuristic” (Slovic et al., 2007 ); and the “appraisal-tendency framework” (Lerner et al., 2015 ) illustrate how emotions can hijack rational-decision-making processes to the point of being the dominant influence on risk assessments. Research has shown that “perceived risk judgments”—estimates of the likelihood that something bad will happen—are especially hampered by emotion (Pachur et al., 2012 ) and that different types of affect can bias such judgments in different ways (Lerner et al., 2015 ). For example, fear can in particular bias assessments away from rational analysis to overestimate risks, as well as to perceive negative events as unpredictable (Lerner et al., 2015 ).

Although gun ownership is associated with positive feelings about firearms within “gun culture” (Pierre, 2015 ; Kalesan et al., 2016 ; Metzl, 2019 ), most research comparing gun owners to non-gun owners suggests that ownership is rooted in fear. While long guns have historically been owned primarily for hunting and other recreational purposes, US surveys dating back to the 1990s have revealed that the most frequent reason for gun ownership and more specifically handgun ownership is self-protection (Cook and Ludwig, 1997 ; Azrael et al., 2017 ; Pew Research Center, 2017 ). Research has likewise shown that the decision to obtain a firearm is largely motivated by past victimization and/or fears of future victimization (Kleck et al., 2011 ; Hauser and Kleck, 2013 ).

A few studies have reported that handgun ownership is associated with past victimization, perceived risk of crime, and perceived ineffectiveness of police protection within low-income communities where these concerns may be congruent with real risks (Vacha and McLaughlin, 2000 , 2004 ). However, gun ownership tends to be lower in urban settings and in low-income families where there might be higher rates of violence and crime (Vacha and McLaughlin, 2000 ). Instead, the largest demographic of gun owners in the US are white men living in rural communities who are earning more than $100K/year (Azrael et al., 2017 ). Mencken and Froese ( 2019 ) likewise reported that gun owners tend to have higher incomes and greater ratings of life happiness than non-owners. These findings suggest a mismatch between subjective fear and objective reality.

Stroebe and colleagues ( 2017 ) reported that the specific perceived risk of victimization and more “diffuse” fears that the world is a dangerous place are both independent predictors of handgun ownership, with perceived risk of assault associated with having been or knowing a victim of violent crime and belief in a dangerous world associated with political conservatism. These findings hint at the likelihood that perceived risk of victimization can be based on vicarious sources with a potential for bias, whether through actual known acquaintances or watching the nightly news, conducting a Google search or scanning one’s social media feed, or reading “The Armed Citizen” column in the NRA newsletter The American Rifleman . It also suggests that a general fear of crime, independent of actual or even perceived individual risk, may be a powerful motivator for gun ownership for some that might track with race and political ideology.

Several authors have drawn a connection between gun ownership and racial tensions by examining the cultural symbolism and socio-political meaning of guns. Bhatia ( 2019 ) detailed how the NRA’s “disinformation campaign reliant on fearmongering” is constructed around a narrative of “fear and identity politics” that exploits current xenophobic sentiments related to immigrants. Metzl ( 2019 ) noted that during the 1960s, conservatives were uncharacteristically in favor of gun control when armed resistance was promoted by Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, and others involved in the Black Power Movement. Today, Metzl argues, “mainstream society reflexively codes white men carrying weapons in public as patriots, while marking armed black men as threats or criminals.” In support of this view, a 2013 study found that having a gun in the home was significantly associated with racism against black people as measured by the Symbolic Racism Scale, noting that “for each 1 point increase in symbolic racism, there was a 50% greater odds of having a gun in the home and a 28% increase in the odds of supporting permits to carry concealed handguns” (O’Brien et al., 2013 ). Hypothesizing that guns are a symbol of hegemonic masculinity that serves to “shore up white male privilege in society,” Stroud ( 2012 ) interviewed a non-random sample of 20 predominantly white men in Texas who had licenses for concealed handgun carry. The men described how guns help to fulfill their identities as protectors of their families, while characterizing imagined dangers with rhetoric suggesting specific fears about black criminals. These findings suggest that gun ownership among white men may be related to a collective identity as “good guys” protecting themselves against “bad guys” who are people of color, a premise echoed in the lay press with headlines like, “Why Are White Men Stockpiling Guns?” (Smith, 2018 ), “Report: White Men Stockpile Guns Because They’re Afraid of Black People” (Harriott, 2018 ), and “Gun Rights Are About Keeping White Men on Top” (Wuertenberg, 2018 ).

Connecting the dots, the available evidence therefore suggests that for many gun owners, fears about victimization can result in confirmation, myside, and optimism biases that not only discount the risks of ownership, but also elevate the salience of perceived benefit, however remote, as it does when one buys a lottery ticket (Rogers and Webley, 2001 ). Indeed, among gun owners there is widespread belief that having a gun makes one safer, supported by published claims that where there are “more guns”, there is “less crime” (Lott, 1998 , 1999 ) as well as statistics and anecdotes about successful defensive gun use (DGU) (Kleck and Gertz, 1995 , 1998 ; Tark and Kleck, 2004 ; Cramer and Burnett, 2012 ). Suffice it to say that there have been numerous debates about how to best interpret this body of evidence, with critics claiming that “more guns, less crime” is a myth (Ayres and Donohue, 2003 ; Moyer, 2017 ) that has been “discredited” (Wintemute, 2008 ) and that the incidence of DGU has been grossly overestimated and pales in comparison to the risk of being threatened or harmed by a gun in the home (Hemenway, 1997 , 2011 ; Cook and Ludwig, 1998 ; Azrael and Hemenway, 2000 ; Hemenway et al., 2000 ). Attempts at objective analysis have concluded that surveys to date have defined and measured DGU inconsistently with unclear numbers of false positives and false negatives (Smith, 1997 ; McDowall et al., 2000 ; National Research Council, 2005 ; RAND, 2018 ), that the causal effects of DGU on reducing injury are “inconclusive” (RAND, 2018 ), and that “neither side seems to be willing to give ground or see their opponent’s point of view” (Smith, 1997 ). With the scientific debate about DGU mirrored in the lay press (Defilippis and Hughes, 2015 ; Kleck, 2015 ; Doherty, 2015 ), a rational assessment of whether guns make owners safer is hampered by a lack of “settled science”. With no apparent consensus, motivated reasoning can pave the way to the nullification of opposing arguments in favor of personal opinions and ideological stances.

For gun owners, even if it is acknowledged that on average successful DGU is much less likely than a homicide or suicide in the home, not having a gun at all translates to zero chance of self-preservation, which are intolerable odds. The bottom line is that when gun owners believe that owning a gun will make them feel safer, little else may matter. Curiously however, there is conflicting evidence that gun ownership actually decreases fears of victimization (Hauser and Kleck, 2013 ; Dowd-Arrow et al., 2019 ). That gun ownership may not mitigate such fears could help to account for why some individuals go on to acquire multiple guns beyond their initial purchase with US gun owners possessing an average of 5 firearms and 8% of owners having 10 or more (Azrael et al., 2017 ).

Gun owner diversity

A psychological model of the polarized gun debate in America would ideally compare those for or against gun control legislation. However, research to date has instead focused mainly on differences between gun owners and non-gun owners, which has several limitations. For example, of the nearly 70% of Americans who do not own a gun, 36% report that they can see themselves owning one in the future (Pew Research Center, 2017 ) with 11.5% of all gun owners in 2015 having newly acquired one in the previous 5 years (Wertz et al., 2018 ). Gun ownership and non-ownership are therefore dynamic states that may not reflect static ideology. Personal accounts such as Willis’ ( 2010 ) article, “I Was Anti-gun, Until I Got Stalked,” illustrate this point well.

With existing research heavily reliant on comparing gun owners to non-gun owners, a psychological model of gun attitudes in the US will have limited utility if it relies solely on gun owner stereotypes based on their most frequent demographic characteristics. On the contrary, Hauser and Kleck ( 2013 ) have argued that “a more complete understanding of the relationship between fear of crime and gun ownership at the individual level is crucial”. Just so, looking more closely at the diversity of gun owners can reveal important details beyond the kinds of stereotypes that are often used to frame political debates.

Foremost, it must be recognized that not all gun owners are conservative white men with racist attitudes. Over the past several decades, women have comprised 9–14% of US gun owners with the “gender gap” narrowing due to decreasing male ownership (Smith and Son, 2015 ). A 2017 Pew Survey reported that 22% of women in the US own a gun and that female gun owners are just as likely as men to belong to the NRA (Pew Research Center, 2017 ). Although the 36% rate of gun ownership among US whites is the highest for any racial demographic, 25% of blacks and 15% of Hispanics report owning guns with these racial groups being significantly more concerned than whites about gun violence in their communities and the US as a whole (Pew Research Center, 2017 ). Providing a striking counterpoint to Stroud’s ( 2012 ) interviews of white gun owners in Texas, Craven ( 2017 ) interviewed 11 black gun owners across the country who offered diverse views on guns and the question of whether owning them makes them feel safer, including if confronted by police during a traffic stop. Kelly ( 2019 ) has similarly offered a self-portrait as a female “left-wing anarchist” against the stereotype of guns owners as “Republicans, racist libertarians, and other generally Constitution-obsessed weirdos”. She reminds us that, “there is also a long history of armed community self-defense among the radical left that is often glossed over or forgotten entirely in favor of the Fox News-friendly narrative that all liberals hate guns… when the cops and other fascists see that they’re not the only ones packing, the balance of power shifts, and they tend to reconsider their tactics”.

Although Mencken and Froese ( 2019 ) concluded that “white men in economic distress find comfort in guns as a means to reestablish a sense of individual power and moral certitude,” their study results actually demonstrated that gun owners fall into distinguishable groups based on different levels of “moral and emotional empowerment” imparted by guns. For example, those with low levels of gun empowerment were more likely to be female and to own long guns for recreational purposes such as hunting and collecting. Other research has shown that the motivations to own a gun, and the degree to which gun ownership is related to fear and the desire for self-protection, also varies according to the type of gun (Stroebe et al., 2017 ). Owning guns, owning specific types of guns (e.g. handguns, long guns, and so-called “military style” semi-automatic rifles like AR-15s), carrying a gun in public, and keeping a loaded gun on one’s nightstand all have different psychological implications. A 2015 study reported that new gun owners were younger and more likely to identify as liberal than long-standing gun owners (Wertz et al., 2018 ). Although Kalesan et al. ( 2016 ) found that gun ownership is more likely among those living within a “gun culture” where ownership is prevalent, encouraged, and part of social life, it would therefore be a mistake to characterize gun culture as a monolith.

It would also be a mistake to equate gun ownership with opposition to gun legislation reform or vice-versa. Although some evidence supports a strong association (Wolpert and Gimpel, 1998 ), more recent studies suggest important exceptions to the rule. While only about 30% of the US population owns a gun, over 70% believes that most citizens should be able to legally own them (Pew Research Center, 2017 ). Women tend to be more likely than men to support gun control, even when they are gun owners themselves (Kahan and Braman, 2003 ; Mencken and Froese, 2019 ). Older (age 70–79) Americans likewise have some of the highest rates of gun ownership, but also the highest rates of support for gun control (Pederson et al., 2015 ). In Mencken and Froese’s study ( 2019 ), most gun owners reporting lower levels of gun empowerment favored bans on semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines and opposed arming teachers in schools. Kahan and Braman ( 2003 ) theorized that attitudes towards gun control are best understood according to a “cultural theory of risk”. In their study sample, those with “hierarchical” and “individualist” cultural orientations were more likely than those with “egalitarian” views to oppose gun control and these perspectives were more predictive than other variables including political affiliation and fear of crime.

In fact, both gun owners and non-owners report high degrees of support for universal background checks; laws mandating safe gun storage in households with children; and “red flag” laws restricting access to firearms for those hospitalized for mental illness or those otherwise at risk of harming themselves or others, those convicted of certain crimes including public display of a gun in a threatening manner, those subject to temporary domestic violence restraining orders, and those on “no-fly” or other watch lists (Pew Research Center, 2017 ; Barry et al., 2018 ). According to a 2015 survey, the majority of the US public also opposes carrying firearms in public spaces with most gun owners opposing public carry in schools, college campuses, places of worship, bars, and sports stadiums (Wolfson et al., 2017 ). Despite broad public support for gun legislation reform however, it is important to recognize that the threat of gun restrictions is an important driver of gun acquisition (Wallace, 2015 ; Aisch and Keller, 2016 ). As a result, proposals to restrict gun ownership boosted gun sales considerably under the Obama administration (Depetris-Chauvin, 2015 ), whereas gun companies like Remington and United Sporting Companies have since filed for bankruptcy under the Trump administration.

A shared culture of fear

Developing a psychological understanding of attitudes towards guns and gun control legislation in the US that accounts for underlying emotions, motivated reasoning, and individual variation must avoid the easy trap of pathologizing gun owners and dismissing their fears as irrational. Instead, it should consider the likelihood that motivated reasoning underlies opinion on both sides of the gun debate, with good reason to conclude that fear is a prominent source of both “pro-gun” and “anti-gun” attitudes. Although the research on fear and gun ownership summarized above implies that non-gun owners are unconcerned about victimization, a closer look at individual study data reveals both small between-group differences and significant within-group heterogeneity. For example, Stroebe et al.’s ( 2017 ) findings that gun owners had greater mean ratings of belief in a dangerous world, perceived risk of victimization, and the perceived effectiveness of owning a gun for self-defense were based on inter-group differences of <1 point on a 7-point Likert scale. Fear of victimization is therefore a universal fear for gun owners and non-gun owners alike, with important differences in both quantitative and qualitative aspects of those fears. Kahan and Braham ( 2003 ) noted that the gun debate is not so much a debate about the personal risks of gun ownership, as it is a one about which of two potential fears is most salient—that of “firearm casualties in a world with insufficient gun control or that of personal defenselessness in a world with excessive control”.

Although this “shared fear” hypothesis has not been thoroughly tested in existing research, there is general support for it based on evidence that fear is an especially potent influence on risk assessment and decision-making when considering low-frequency catastrophic events (Chanel et al., 2009 ). In addition, biased risk assessments have been linked to individual feelings about a specific activity. Whereas many activities in the real world have both high risk and high benefit, positive attitudes about an activity are associated with biased judgments of low risk and high benefit while negative attitudes are associated with biased judgments of high risk and low benefit (Slovic et al., 2007 ). These findings match those of the gun debate, whereby catastrophic events like mass shootings can result in “probability neglect,” over-estimating the likelihood of risk (Sunstein, 2003 ; Sunstein and Zeckhauser, 2011 ) with polarized differences regarding guns as a root cause and gun control as a viable solution. For those that have positive feelings about guns and their perceived benefit, the risk of gun ownership is minimized as discussed above. However, based on findings from psychological research on fear (Loewenstein et al., 2001 ; Slovic et al., 2007 ), the reverse is also likely to be true—those with negative feelings about guns who perceive little benefit to ownership may tend to over-estimate risks. Consistent with this dichotomy, both calls for legislative gun reform, as well as gun purchases increase in the wake of mass shootings (Wallace, 2015 ; Wozniak, 2017 ), with differences primarily predicted by the relative self-serving attributional biases of gun ownership and non-ownership alike (Joslyn and Haider-Markel, 2017 ).

Psychological research has shown that fear is associated with loss of control, with risks that are unfamiliar and uncontrollable perceived as disproportionately dangerous (Lerner et al., 2015 ; Sunstein, 2003 ). Although mass shootings have increased in recent years, they remain extremely rare events and represent a miniscule proportion of overall gun violence. And yet, as acts of terrorism, they occur in places like schools that are otherwise thought of as a suburban “safe spaces,” unlike inner cities where violence is more mundane, and are often given sensationalist coverage in the media. A 2019 Harris Poll found that 79% of Americans endorse stress as a result of the possibility of a mass shooting, with about a third reporting that they “cannot go anywhere without worrying about being a victim” (American Psychological Association, 2019 ). While some evidence suggests that gun owners may be more concerned about mass shootings than non-gun owners (Dowd-Arrow et al., 2019 ), this is again a quantitative difference as with fear of victimization more generally. There is little doubt that parental fears about children being victims of gun violence were particularly heightened in the wake of Columbine (Altheide, 2019 ) and it is likely that subsequent school shootings at Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook Elementary, and Stoneman Douglas High have been especially impactful in the minds of those calling for increasing restrictions on gun ownership. For those privileged to be accustomed to community safety who are less worried about home invasion and have faith in the police to provide protection, fantasizing about “gun free zones” may reflect a desire to recreate safe spaces in the wake of mass shootings that invoke feelings of loss of control.

Altheide ( 2019 ) has argued that mass shootings in the US post-Columbine have been embedding within a larger cultural narrative of terrorism, with “expanded social control and policies that helped legitimate the war on terror”. Sunstein and Zeckhauser ( 2011 ) have similarly noted that following terrorist attacks, the public tends to demand responses from government, favoring precautionary measures that are “not justified by any plausible analysis of expected utility” and over-estimating potential benefits. However, such responses may not only be ineffective, but potentially damaging. For example, although collective anxieties in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks resulted in the rapid implementation of new screening procedures for boarding airplanes, it has been argued that the “theater” of response may have done well to decrease fear without any evidence of actual effectiveness in reducing danger (Graham, 2019 ) while perhaps even increasing overall mortality by avoiding air travel in favor of driving (Sunstein, 2003 ; Sunstein and Zeckhauser, 2011 ).

As with the literature on DGU, the available evidence supporting the effectiveness of specific gun laws in reducing gun violence is less than definitive (Koper et al., 2004 ; Hahn et al., 2005 ; Lee et al., 2017 ; Webster and Wintemute, 2015 ), leaving the utility of gun reform legislation open to debate and motivated reasoning. Several authors have argued that even if proposed gun control measures are unlikely to deter mass shooters, “doing something is better than nothing” (Fox and DeLateur, 2014 ) and that ineffective counter-terrorism responses are worthwhile if they reduce public fear (Sunstein and Zeckhauser, 2011 ). Crucially however, this perspective fails to consider the impact of gun control legislation on the fears of those who value guns for self-protection. For them, removing guns from law-abiding “good guys” while doing nothing to deter access to the “bad guys” who commit crimes is illogical anathema. Gun owners and gun advocates likewise reject the concept of “safe spaces” and regard the notion of “gun free zones” as a liability that invites rather than prevents acts of terrorism. In other words, gun control proposals designed to decrease fear have the opposite of their intended effect on those who view guns as symbols of personal safety, increasing rather than decreasing their fears independently of any actual effects on gun violence. Such policies are therefore non-starters, and will remain non-starters, for the sizeable proportion of Americans who regard guns as essential for self-preservation.

In 2006, Braman and Kahan noted that “the Great American Gun Debate… has convulsed the national polity for the better part of four decades without producing results satisfactory to either side” and argued that consequentialist arguments about public health risks based on cost–benefit analysis are trumped by the cultural meanings of guns to the point of being “politically inert” (Braman and Kahan, 2006 ). More than a decade later, that argument is iterated in this series on “What Guns Mean”. In this essay, it is further argued that persisting debates about the effectiveness of DGU and gun control legislation are at their heart trumped by shared concerns about personal safety, victimization, and mass shootings within a larger culture of fear, with polarized opinions about how to best mitigate those fears that are determined by the symbolic, cultural, and personal meanings of guns and gun ownership.

Coming full circle to the riddle, “Do guns kill people or do people kill people?”, a psychologically informed perspective rejects the question as a false dichotomy that can be resolved by the statement, “people kill people… with guns”. It likewise suggests a way forward by acknowledging both common fears and individual differences beyond the limited, binary caricature of the gun debate that is mired in endless arguments over disputed facts. For meaningful legislative change to occur, the debate must be steered away from its portrayal as two immutable sides caught between not doing anything on the one hand and enacting sweeping bans or repealing the 2nd Amendment on the other. In reality, public attitudes towards gun control are more nuanced than that, with support or opposition to specific gun control proposals predicted by distinct psychological and cultural factors (Wozniak, 2017 ) such that achieving consensus may prove less elusive than is generally assumed. Accordingly, gun reform proposals should focus on “low hanging fruit” where there is broad support such as requiring and enforcing universal background checks, enacting “red flag” laws balanced by guaranteeing gun ownership rights to law-abiding citizens, and implementing public safety campaigns that promote safe firearm handling and storage. Finally, the Dickey Amendment should be repealed so that research can inform public health interventions aimed at reducing gun violence and so that individuals can replace motivated reasoning with evidence-based decision-making about personal gun ownership and guns in society.

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Key facts about Americans and guns

Guns are deeply ingrained in American society and the nation’s political debates.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms, and about a third of U.S. adults say they personally own a gun. At the same time, in response to concerns such as rising gun death rates and  mass shootings , President Joe Biden has proposed gun policy legislation that would expand on the bipartisan gun safety bill Congress passed last year.

Here are some key findings about Americans’ views of gun ownership, gun policy and other subjects, drawn primarily from a Pew Research Center survey conducted in June 2023 .

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to summarize key facts about Americans and guns. We used data from recent Center surveys to provide insights into Americans’ views on gun policy and how those views have changed over time, as well as to examine the proportion of adults who own guns and their reasons for doing so.

The analysis draws primarily from a survey of 5,115 U.S. adults conducted from June 5 to June 11, 2023. Everyone who took part in the surveys cited is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the  ATP’s methodology .

Here are the  questions used for the analysis on gun ownership , the questions used for the analysis on gun policy , and  the survey’s methodology .

Additional information about the fall 2022 survey of parents and its methodology can be found at the link in the text of this post.

Measuring gun ownership in the United States comes with unique challenges. Unlike many demographic measures, there is not a definitive data source from the government or elsewhere on how many American adults own guns.

The Pew Research Center survey conducted June 5-11, 2023, on the Center’s American Trends Panel, asks about gun ownership using two separate questions to measure personal and household ownership. About a third of adults (32%) say they own a gun, while another 10% say they do not personally own a gun but someone else in their household does. These shares have changed little from surveys conducted in 2021  and  2017 . In each of those surveys, 30% reported they owned a gun.

These numbers are largely consistent with rates of gun ownership reported by Gallup , but somewhat higher than those reported by NORC’s General Social Survey . Those surveys also find only modest changes in recent years.

The FBI maintains data on background checks on individuals attempting to purchase firearms in the United States. The FBI reported a surge in background checks in 2020 and 2021, during the coronavirus pandemic. The number of federal background checks declined in 2022 and through the first half of this year, according to FBI statistics .

About four-in-ten U.S. adults say they live in a household with a gun, including 32% who say they personally own one,  according to an August report based on our June survey. These numbers are virtually unchanged since the last time we asked this question in 2021.

There are differences in gun ownership rates by political affiliation, gender, community type and other factors.

• Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are more than twice as likely as Democrats and Democratic leaners to say they personally own a gun (45% vs. 20%).
• 40% of men say they own a gun, compared with 25% of women.
• 47% of adults living in rural areas report personally owning a firearm, as do smaller shares of those who live in suburbs (30%) or urban areas (20%).
• 38% of White Americans own a gun, compared with smaller shares of Black (24%), Hispanic (20%) and Asian (10%) Americans.

Personal protection tops the list of reasons gun owners give for owning a firearm.  About three-quarters (72%) of gun owners say that protection is a major reason they own a gun. Considerably smaller shares say that a major reason they own a gun is for hunting (32%), for sport shooting (30%), as part of a gun collection (15%) or for their job (7%). 

The reasons behind gun ownership have changed only modestly since our 2017 survey of attitudes toward gun ownership and gun policies. At that time, 67% of gun owners cited protection as a major reason they owned a firearm.

Gun owners tend to have much more positive feelings about having a gun in the house than non-owners who live with them. For instance, 71% of gun owners say they enjoy owning a gun – but far fewer non-gun owners in gun-owning households (31%) say they enjoy having one in the home. And while 81% of gun owners say owning a gun makes them feel safer, a narrower majority (57%) of non-owners in gun households say the same about having a firearm at home. Non-owners are also more likely than owners to worry about having a gun in the home (27% vs. 12%, respectively).

Feelings about gun ownership also differ by political affiliation, even among those who personally own firearms. Republican gun owners are more likely than Democratic owners to say owning a gun gives them feelings of safety and enjoyment, while Democratic owners are more likely to say they worry about having a gun in the home.

Non-gun owners are split on whether they see themselves owning a firearm in the future. About half (52%) of Americans who don’t own a gun say they could never see themselves owning one, while nearly as many (47%) could imagine themselves as gun owners in the future.

Among those who currently do not own a gun:

• 61% of Republicans and 40% of Democrats who don’t own a gun say they would consider owning one in the future.
• 56% of Black non-owners say they could see themselves owning a gun one day, compared with smaller shares of White (48%), Hispanic (40%) and Asian (38%) non-owners.

Americans are evenly split over whether gun ownership does more to increase or decrease safety. About half (49%) say it does more to increase safety by allowing law-abiding citizens to protect themselves, but an equal share say gun ownership does more to reduce safety by giving too many people access to firearms and increasing misuse.

Republicans and Democrats differ on this question: 79% of Republicans say that gun ownership does more to increase safety, while a nearly identical share of Democrats (78%) say that it does more to reduce safety.

Urban and rural Americans also have starkly different views. Among adults who live in urban areas, 64% say gun ownership reduces safety, while 34% say it does more to increase safety. Among those who live in rural areas, 65% say gun ownership increases safety, compared with 33% who say it does more to reduce safety. Those living in the suburbs are about evenly split.

Americans increasingly say that gun violence is a major problem. Six-in-ten U.S. adults say gun violence is a very big problem in the country today, up 9 percentage points from spring 2022. In the survey conducted this June, 23% say gun violence is a moderately big problem, and about two-in-ten say it is either a small problem (13%) or not a problem at all (4%).

Looking ahead, 62% of Americans say they expect the level of gun violence to increase over the next five years. This is double the share who expect it to stay the same (31%). Just 7% expect the level of gun violence to decrease.

A majority of Americans (61%) say it is too easy to legally obtain a gun in this country. Another 30% say the ease of legally obtaining a gun is about right, and 9% say it is too hard to get a gun. Non-gun owners are nearly twice as likely as gun owners to say it is too easy to legally obtain a gun (73% vs. 38%). Meanwhile, gun owners are more than twice as likely as non-owners to say the ease of obtaining a gun is about right (48% vs. 20%).

Partisan and demographic differences also exist on this question. While 86% of Democrats say it is too easy to obtain a gun legally, 34% of Republicans say the same. Most urban (72%) and suburban (63%) dwellers say it’s too easy to legally obtain a gun. Rural residents are more divided: 47% say it is too easy, 41% say it is about right and 11% say it is too hard.

About six-in-ten U.S. adults (58%) favor stricter gun laws. Another 26% say that U.S. gun laws are about right, and 15% favor less strict gun laws. The percentage who say these laws should be stricter has fluctuated a bit in recent years. In 2021, 53% favored stricter gun laws, and in 2019, 60% said laws should be stricter.

About a third (32%) of parents with K-12 students say they are very or extremely worried about a shooting ever happening at their children’s school, according to a fall 2022 Center survey of parents with at least one child younger than 18. A similar share of K-12 parents (31%) say they are not too or not at all worried about a shooting ever happening at their children’s school, while 37% of parents say they are somewhat worried.

Among all parents with children under 18, including those who are not in school, 63% see improving mental health screening and treatment as a very or extremely effective way to prevent school shootings. This is larger than the shares who say the same about having police officers or armed security in schools (49%), banning assault-style weapons (45%), or having metal detectors in schools (41%). Just 24% of parents say allowing teachers and school administrators to carry guns in school would be a very or extremely effective approach, while half say this would be not too or not at all effective.

There is broad partisan agreement on some gun policy proposals, but most are politically divisive,   the June 2023 survey found . Majorities of U.S. adults in both partisan coalitions somewhat or strongly favor two policies that would restrict gun access: preventing those with mental illnesses from purchasing guns (88% of Republicans and 89% of Democrats support this) and increasing the minimum age for buying guns to 21 years old (69% of Republicans, 90% of Democrats). Majorities in both parties also  oppose  allowing people to carry concealed firearms without a permit (60% of Republicans and 91% of Democrats oppose this).

Republicans and Democrats differ on several other proposals. While 85% of Democrats favor banning both assault-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, majorities of Republicans oppose these proposals (57% and 54%, respectively).

Most Republicans, on the other hand, support allowing teachers and school officials to carry guns in K-12 schools (74%) and allowing people to carry concealed guns in more places (71%). These proposals are supported by just 27% and 19% of Democrats, respectively.

Gun ownership is linked with views on gun policies. Americans who own guns are less likely than non-owners to favor restrictions on gun ownership, with a notable exception. Nearly identical majorities of gun owners (87%) and non-owners (89%) favor preventing mentally ill people from buying guns.

Within both parties, differences between gun owners and non-owners are evident – but they are especially stark among Republicans. For example, majorities of Republicans who do not own guns support banning high-capacity ammunition magazines and assault-style weapons, compared with about three-in-ten Republican gun owners.

Among Democrats, majorities of both gun owners and non-owners favor these two proposals, though support is greater among non-owners. 

Note: This is an update of a post originally published on Jan. 5, 2016 .

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Katherine Schaeffer is a research analyst at Pew Research Center .

About 1 in 4 U.S. teachers say their school went into a gun-related lockdown in the last school year

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Reducing gun violence: Stanford scholars tackle the issue

After 19 children and two teachers were slaughtered by a gunman at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, many Americans are asking, yet again, how to prevent future acts of senseless violence from occurring. What gun laws need to be changed? Why is it so difficult to pass regulations? How can Second Amendment rights be balanced with firearm safety? 

Stanford scholars have been studying these issues from a range of perspectives, including law, politics, economics, and medicine. Here are some of their findings.

Update: May 25, 2022: This story was originally published on Feb. 26, 2018, and has been updated to include new content.

Causes, impacts of gun violence

Uncovering the causes of gun violence has been a challenge, in part because research is limited by federal legislation that constrains research funding on the issue. Scholar Nigam Shah at the Stanford School of Medicine has written about how this has affected empirical study. But that has not deterred scholars from examining its impacts. David Studdert, also at the School of Medicine, has studied the devastating consequences of gun violence, particularly the risks it poses to public health.  

Maya Rossin-Slater, an associate professor of medicine and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), has also looked at the long-term impact of gun violence, specifically among American children who experienced a shooting at their school. Rossin-Slater found that they have higher rates of absenteeism, lower high school and college graduation rates, and by their mid-twenties, earn lower incomes.

Below is some of that research. 

Californians living with handgun owners more than twice as likely to die by homicide, study finds

Residents who don’t own a handgun but live with someone who does are significantly more likely to die by homicide compared with those in gun-free homes, research shows.

New study of gun violence in schools identifies long-term harms

Research from SIEPR’s Maya Rossin-Slater finds that students exposed to school shootings face “lasting, persistent” adversity in their educational and long-term economic outcomes.

Shirin Sinnar on the Buffalo shooting, hate crimes, and domestic terrorism

In the wake of the Buffalo shooting, Stanford Law School’s Shirin Sinnar discusses the scale of white supremacist violence in the U.S. and the rise of hate crimes.

Disconnect: The gap between gun violence and research in numbers

Gun violence is much discussed but little studied, largely due to federal decisions governing research funding. A new analysis highlights just how big the gap between the violence and our knowledge of it is. The answer? It’s huge.

Supporting students exposed to school shootings

Maya Rossin-Slater talks about her research into the mental health impact of severe school violence.

Panel discusses how shootings affect those unscathed by bullets

A panel of faculty members at the School of Medicine said shootings can affect the mental health of people close to the violence.

California handgun sales spiked after two mass shootings

In the six weeks after the Newtown and San Bernardino mass shootings, handguns sales jumped in California, yet there is little research on why – or on the implications for public health, according to a Stanford researcher.

Mass shootings: Public face of a much larger epidemic

While mass shootings have become the public face of gun violence, they account for less than 1% of the 40,000 firearm deaths each year.  

Short-term hospital readmissions for gun injuries cost $86 million a year

A study from Stanford researchers has found that readmissions account for 9.5% of the $911 million spent annually on gun-injury hospitalizations.

Supporting children through loss

Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann talks about how to help young people experiencing grief.

Firearm injuries in children, teens costly for U.S. health care system, Stanford study finds

The average cost of initial hospitalization to treat pediatric gun injuries is about $13,000 per patient and has risen in recent decades, a Stanford Medicine study found.

Investigating psychiatric illnesses of mass shooters

Ira Glick and his collaborators studied the psychiatric state of 35 mass shooters in the United States who survived the incidents, which took place between 1982 and 2019.

The silent cost of school shootings

SIEPR’s Maya Rossin-Slater finds the average rate of antidepressant use among youths under age 20 rose by 21 percent in the local communities where fatal school shootings occurred.

New study analyzes recent gun violence research

Consensus is growing in recent research evaluating the impact of right-to-carry concealed handgun laws, showing that they increase violent crime, despite what older research says.

Handgun ownership associated with much higher suicide risk

Men who own handguns are eight times more likely to die of gun suicides than men who don’t own handguns, and women who own handguns are 35 times more likely than women who don’t.

Advice on how to cope with the threat of school shootings

Victor Carrion offers advice on how families can cope with the stress of school safety.

Reducing gun violence

Many Americans are demanding practical steps to reduce gun crime. One way is to have more stringent gun safety policies, such as legislation requiring guns to be stored safely, more stringent background checks, or as President Biden announced Tuesday, a federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. 

Research has shown that states with tighter policies save lives: One study by Stephanie Chao found that states with stricter gun laws have lower rates of gun deaths among children and teenagers, and states with child prevention access laws are linked with fewer gun suicides in this age group.

“If you put more regulations on firearms, it does make a difference,” said Chao, assistant professor of surgery and senior author of the study. “It does end up saving children’s lives.” Her analysis found that states with the strictest laws had a mortality rate of 2.6 per 100,000 and for states with the least strict laws, mortality rate was almost double at 5.0 per 100,000.  

John Donohue: One tragic week with two mass shootings and the uniquely American gun problem

In a Q&A, Stanford Law School gun law expert John J. Donohue III discusses mass shootings in the U.S., the challenges facing police when confronting powerful automatic weapons and the prospect of gun safety laws.

Lax state gun laws linked to more child gun deaths

States with strict gun laws have lower rates of gun deaths among children and teenagers, and laws to keep guns away from minors are linked with fewer gun suicides in this age group, a Stanford study found.

Improved gun buyer background checks would impede some mass shootings, Stanford expert says

Stanford Law Professor John Donohue says a background check system that was universal and effectively operated could impede gun acquisition by people who commit mass shootings.

How to solve more gun crimes without spending more money

Simple tweaks to how police process bullet casings could dramatically improve their forensic data.

Reducing civilian firepower would boost police and community safety, Stanford expert says

In addition to restricting the firepower a person can amass, Stanford law Professor John J. Donohue advocates efforts to build trust between communities and law enforcement agencies as a way to enhance both police and citizen safety.

Stricter gun laws reduce child and adolescent gun deaths, Stanford study finds

Laws that keep guns away from young people are especially strongly linked to lower rates of gun suicides in youth.

Gun legislation and policy

For nearly three decades, law Professor John Donohue III has studied what can be done to prevent gun violence in the United States. A lawyer and economist, Donohue explores how law and public policy are connected to gun violence, including how gun laws in the U.S. compare to other countries, as well as how legislation varies across the states, to better understand the effect that has on rates of violence. 

“The U.S. is by far the world leader in the number of guns in civilian hands,” Donohue explained . “The stricter gun laws of other ‘advanced countries’ have restrained homicidal violence, suicides and gun accidents – even when, in some cases, laws were introduced over massive protests from their armed citizens.” 

Here are some of his findings, and other research related to legislating gun safety in the U.S.

Stanford’s John Donohue on guns, mass shootings and the law in the U.S.

On Nov. 30, American students were once again the victims of a school shooting. Stanford law Professor John Donohue discusses the case and gun violence in the U.S.

How U.S. gun control compares to the rest of the world

While deaths from mass shootings are a relatively small part of the overall homicidal violence in America, they are particularly wrenching. The problem is worse in the U.S. than in most other industrialized nations. And it’s getting worse.

4 gun control steps U.S. needs now

John Donohue pens an opinion piece for CNN laying out four steps the United States should take to strengthen gun legislation.

Violent crime increases in right-to-carry states

Stanford Law School Professor John Donohue found that states that adopted right-to-carry concealed handgun laws have experienced a 13 to 15 percent increase in violent crime in the 10 years after enacting those laws.

Another mass shooting: An update on U.S. gun laws

In a Q&A, John Donohue discusses gun safety law and legislative developments.

Stanford GSE holds teach-in on research into gun violence in schools

Education scholars look at the evidence behind policy ideas to address school shootings.

Will Americans ever think differently about guns?

Stanford medicine and law professor David Studdert thinks more public health evidence is needed before cultural attitudes around gun safety and violence will change.

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New Histories of Gun Rights and Regulation: Essays on the Place of Guns in American Law and Society

Lanty L. Smith 67 Distinguished Professor of Law

Associate Professor of Law

Melvin G. Shimm Distinguished Professor of Law

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The future of Second Amendment law and scholarship will continue to be determined in large part by history. In this area of constitutional law, perhaps more than in any other, our understanding of the past continues to shape the present—the scope of the constitutional right, and accordingly, the government’s power to regulate in the interest of public safety, hangs in the balance. The essays in this book explore the historical tradition of gun rights and regulation, broadening the growing scholarly conversation about the law and history of firearms. The contributors, which include distinguished historians and legal scholars, add valuable new context and content to the place of guns in American law and society.

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Guns in America: Foundations and Key Concepts

This non-exhaustive list of readings on the role of guns in US history and society introduces the field as a subject of scholarly inquiry.

Jumping into the scholarly literature on guns and gun violence in the United States can be intimidating, both because of the range of disciplines that address the subject and because of the intensity of debate over a few contentious questions. A non-exhaustive list of fields contributing to “US gun studies” would include not only my own field of history but also public policy, legal studies, criminology, sociology, political science, literature, and public health. Despite the diversity of applicable disciplines, they have gravitated toward a few central questions. Some fields are interested in the origins of US “gun culture,” its relationship to the founding generation, the Second Amendment, or the rapid development of the country in the nineteenth century. Others are oriented toward contemporary issues, typically those like the role of firearms in the United States’ exceptional levels of violence among wealthy countries.

Eight years ago I was a historian of the twentieth-century United States with no background in gun studies but with an interest in the field related to a new project. Now I’m writing a new book, Gun Country: How Gun Culture, Control, and Consumerism Created an Armed Mass Movement in Cold War America , for the University of North Carolina Press. The following key works from a number of disciplines, while not exhaustive, have nevertheless helped orient me to central questions in the field, and they serve as a strong introduction to what scholars have accomplished.

Philip J. Cook, “ The Great American Gun War: Notes from Four Decades in the Trenches .” Crime and Justice , 2013 Cook is a renowned public policy scholar at Duke University who has spent decades publishing in the field of gun studies. This article provides an overview to that field. He notes at the outset that less than fifty years ago, observers bemoaned the lack of critical research on guns and gun violence in American society. Since then, the field has made impressive strides. Cook sets up two “fronts” on which the scholarly battles play out in what he calls the “Great American Gun War”: first, a cohort of mostly social scientists that studies the political, social, economic, and cultural impact of guns in the United States; and second, a group of mostly historians and legal scholars that debates the “true meaning” of the Second Amendment.

Frank Zimring, “ Is Gun Control Likely to Reduce Violent Killings? ” University of Chicago Law Review , 1968 Zimring is one of the founders of the scholarly field of gun studies, and this 1968 article is among its foundational texts. When he began writing at the University of Chicago Law School (today he continues to work at the University of California, Berkeley), there was almost no scholarly research on guns and their impact on crime and daily life in the United States. In 1968 Zimring worked on the underappreciated but important U.S. National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, appointed by President Lyndon Johnson after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Zimring served as a research director on the commission and coauthored Firearms & Violence in American Life (1969), the first comprehensive report of its kind. He has long argued, across hundreds of articles and many books, that guns are the essential element in explaining the unique lethality of US violence.

David J. Silverman, “ Guns, Empires and Indians .” Aeon , 2016 Two recent extraordinary books—David J. Silverman’s Thundersticks (2016) and Priya Satia’s Empire of Guns (2018)—have expanded our chronological and spatial understanding of North American gun history. This article by Silverman and the one below by Satia neatly encapsulate the important arguments each makes. Silverman’s book traces how Native Americans from the seventeenth century built their societies around firearms, access to which could determine the fate of a particular group or nation against its rivals. As he writes here, Indians lived in “a world awash with guns and, with it, waves of terrible gun violence.” The article tells one story of the Mohawks in the 1630s that demonstrates that deterministic narratives about Indian societies and “guns, germs, and steel” are too simplistic and fail to account for the way those societies adapted to and even thrived with new technologies.

Priya Satia, “ Guns and the British Empire .” Aeon , 2018 In the prize-winning Empire of Guns (2018), Satia writes of the significance of the firearms industry to the rapid growth of the industrial revolution in Great Britain. In this article she draws our attention not to the American colonies but the empire on the other side of the world, in South Asia, where British authorities intentionally stifled the growth of a well-respected Indian domestic arms industry, believing their own economic success required Indian dependency on the British technology and know-how.

Sanford Levinson, “ The Embarrassing Second Amendment .” Yale Law Journal , 1989 While gun rights proponents today are quick to point to the Second Amendment as the foundation for their individual right to own a gun—a  right only confirmed for the first time by the US Supreme Court in the controversial 2008 D.C. v. Heller decision—for much of US history, Americans generally neglected this constitutional provision. Well into the 1970s, the general legal and academic consensus was that it was a relic of the eighteenth century, a restriction on the federal government’s ability to deny the states the right to arm militias in light of contemporaneous fears of standing armies commanded by tyrants. With the creation of the modern National Guard at the turn of the twentieth century, the amendment appeared moribund, and the 1939 United States v. Miller decision seemed to confirm it.

But beginning in the 1960s, a concerted effort among a cohort of right-leaning legal scholars began publishing essays, mostly in law school journals, arguing that the amendment had long been misinterpreted—in reality, they wrote, the founders intended to confer an individual right to own a firearm independent of service in a militia. This article by Sanford Levinson, a celebrated liberal legal scholar, drew attention to this changing understanding of the amendment, arguing that legal scholarship may have long been motivated not by an attempt to understand the founders’ intent but instead by scholars’ own political leanings. The article was an important turning point for the mainstreaming of what came to be called the “Standard Model” of the Second Amendment: the idea that the founders intended for it to confer an individual right to firearms ownership independent of military service.

Saul Cornell, “ ‘Half-Cocked’: The Persistence of Anachronism and Presentism in the Academic Debate Over the Second Amendment .” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology , 2016 Reading this article by Saul Cornell, a historian at Fordham University who authored the most important historical monograph on the Second Amendment, A Well-Regulated Militia (2006), feels like stepping into the middle of a years-long argument. The article is Cornell’s response to a prominent legal scholar, James Lindgren, who had recently written dismissively of historical interpretations of the Second Amendment in the wake of the 2008 Heller ruling. To an outsider, much of the discussion is impenetrable, but that’s in part why it’s worth reading: the reader feels the tension and the import of the debate in all its arcane details. The article also captures the disciplinary divide on this subject between historians and legal scholars. Historians can be snappily contemptuous of legal scholars’ sloppy research and cherry-picked quotes, while legal scholars can sneer at historians’ insistence on seemingly tenuous contextual arguments. Plus, the footnotes are an essential bibliography in their own right.

Robert H. Churchill, “ Guns and the Politics of History .” Reviews in American History , 2001 The elephant in the room of US gun history and historiography is Michael Bellesiles’s Arming America (2000), a book about gun culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that promised to reshape not just the historical debate about guns in American society but the contemporary one, too. It made a splash, for sure, winning, among other awards, the Bancroft Prize, the historical profession’s most significant achievement for a monograph. But quickly Bellesiles’s fame became infamy, as a small army of mostly pro-gun researchers combed through his voluminous footnotes and discovered too many inconsistencies to simply write off as carelessness. Eventually an independent blue-ribbon committee concluded that Bellesiles may have falsified some of his research, and the author was stripped of the award and resigned from his position at Emory University. In this detailed review, which appeared before the scandal, Churchill, a libertarian-leaning historian of gun culture, takes Bellesiles to task for a number of research and interpretive issues. Despite the high level of scholarly discourse, contemporary gun politics is always simmering beneath the surface.

Randolph Roth, “ Guns, Gun Culture, and Homicide: The Relationship between Firearms, the Uses of Firearms, and Interpersonal Violence .” William and Mary Quarterly , 2002 The Bellesiles scandal involved the question of “counting guns” in early America and the sources that Bellesiles used (or, as critics said, fabricated) to do so. Bellesiles argued that high levels of US gun violence were a consequence of its “gun culture,” which he claimed did not exist until manufacturers invented it in the mid-nineteenth century. In this article, Roth, author of American Homicide (2009) and a historian who utilizes social science methods to examine violence across US history, tests Bellesiles’s claim of the relationship between gun proliferation and violence. Roth’s meticulous work again points to inconsistencies and problems in Bellesiles’s research and conclusions.

Brian DeLay, “ How Not to Arm a State: American Guns and the Crisis of Governance in Mexico, Nineteenth and Twenty-First Centuries .” Southern California Quarterly , 2013 DeLay’s article, which offers reflections on the transnational history of Mexico since the early nineteenth century, demonstrates the best kind of work a historian can do: take a contemporary problem—in this case the “Iron River of Guns,” the deadly present-day flow of firearms from the United States into Mexico, where most gun purchasing and ownership is illegal—and connect it to a longer history to help us better understand past and present. As DeLay shows, the movement of firearms across the United States’ southern border has long affected the stability of governance and civil society in Mexico. DeLay’s reflections on this long history bring to mind the quip attributed to turn-of-the-century president Porfirio Díaz about his country: “so far from God, so close to the United States”—and its guns.

Robert R. Dykstra, “ Quantifying the Wild West: The Problematic Statistics of Frontier Violence. ” Western Historical Quarterly , 2009 Dykstra presents another way in which historians can contribute to broader public understanding of the past: they can assess and dismantle inherited mythologies that often obscure the truth more than illuminate it. In his work across several decades, Dykstra has confronted mythologies about the American frontier. Here he writes about the mythologies of violence in the so-called Wild West. Such mythologies have been central to gun culture, leading many Americans today to believe that phenomena like high rates of gun violence or social practices like the open or concealed carry of firearms connect them to popular eighteenth- and nineteenth-century traditions. In reality, gun death rates in frontier towns we identify with the “Wild West” were quite low, in large part because those towns imposed restrictions we’d think of today as gun control.

Akinyele Omowale Umoja, “ ‘We Will Shoot Back’: The Natchez Model and Paramilitary Organization in the Mississippi Freedom Movement .” Journal of Black Studies , 2002 There is a rich and growing literature on the links between the Black freedom movement and firearms across US history. Umoja has authored one of the best monographs in that genre, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement (2013), which evolved from this article. Here he writes of the case of paramilitary organizations supporting the freedom movement in the town of Natchez. Umoja’s work, along with that of Charles E. Cobb Jr. and Timothy B. Tyson, among others, has complicated our understanding of the postwar Black freedom movement, which is often simplistically framed as a dichotomy between Martin Luther King’s “peaceful” movement and more militant figures like Malcolm X and groups like the Black Panthers.

Jennifer Carlson, “ Mourning Mayberry: Guns, Masculinity, and Socioeconomic Decline .” Gender and Society , 2015 Carlson is a sociologist who has published two of the most important and innovative recent monographs in gun studies: Citizen-Protectors (2015) and Policing the Second Amendment (2020). This article derives from the former, which examines the practice of armed carry among mostly men, white and Black, in the greater Detroit area. Carlson offers a portrayal that is both critical and empathetic, locating the inspiration for armed carry among men in a feeling of social breakdown and national decline that has challenged men’s identities as family protectors and community guardians.

David Yamane, “ Gun Culture 2.0 and the Great Gun-Buying Spree of 2020 .” Discourse , 2021 Yamane is another sociologist doing innovative and provocative work to help scholars understand the role of guns in American society. He has written widely about the concept of “Gun Culture 2.0,” the shift from hunting and shooting sports to self-defense, which coincides with some evidence of the increasing diversity of US gun ownership. In this article he addresses the most prominent recent development in gun culture—the 2020 gun-buying boom, a remarkable shopping spree, spurred by the pandemic and a summer of protest against police brutality, that was unprecedented even in a country accustomed to them.

David Hemenway, “ The Public Health Approach to Motor Vehicles, Tobacco, and Alcohol, with Applications to Firearms Policy .” Journal of Public Health Policy , 2001 Gun control proponents frequently describe gun violence as a “public health problem,” and there has been extensive research to support that claim. David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, is among the most prolific scholars advocating such an approach. In this article, he compares the failure to acknowledge firearms as a public health problem to the ways public health professionals have approached three other consumer goods that the public has generally agreed present sufficient dangers to require consistent federal regulation. Of course, the catch, critics often observe, is that there is no mention of motor vehicles, tobacco, or alcohol in the US Constitution.

Erin Grinshteyn and David Hemenway, “ Violent Death Rates: The US Compared with Other High-Income OECD Countries, 2010 .” American Journal of Medicine , 2016 It’s worth concluding a concise list of sources illuminating gun culture and gun violence in the United States with a glance overseas. It is a truism of the gun control movement that the United States is an outlier in both gun ownership and violent death rates, and there is a causative relationship between the two. Here, Grinshsteyn and Hemenway offer empirical confirmation. The most reasonable explanation for the United States’ high levels of violent death is its population’s extraordinary access to firearms.

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A gun shop in Dunedin, Florida. Photo by Martin Roemers/Panos Pictures

Why America fell for guns

The us today has extraordinary levels of gun ownership. but to see this as a venerable tradition is to misread history.

by Megan Kang   + BIO

In 1970, amid a national confrontation with the United States’ gun culture following the assassinations of Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, the historian Richard Hofstadter struggled to make sense of how the country had become the ‘only industrial nation in which the possession of rifles, shotguns, and handguns is lawfully prevalent among large numbers of its population.’ Writing for the magazine American Heritage , he expressed grave concern for a country ‘afloat with weapons – perhaps as many as 50 million of them – in civilian hands.’ If the US was afloat then, it’s flooded now.

Half a century later, Americans own approximately 400 million firearms and the country carries the unfortunate distinction of being the only one in the world in which guns are known to be the leading cause of child and adolescent death. Today, Americans live with around 1.2 guns per capita – double that of the next-highest scoring country, Yemen. Despite having less than 5 per cent of the global population, the US possesses nearly half of the world’s civilian-owned guns. Moreover, in recent years Americans have witnessed a surge in gun sales and gun-related deaths, unfolding against a backdrop of increasingly lenient gun laws across states.

In light of these developments, Hofstadter’s question takes on renewed urgency: ‘Why is it that in all other modern democratic societies those endangered ask to have such men disarmed, while in the United States alone they insist on arming themselves?’ How did the US come to be so terribly exceptional with regards to its guns?

F rom the viewpoint of today, it is difficult to imagine a world in which guns were less central to US life. But a gun-filled country was neither innate nor inevitable. The evidence points to a key turning point in US gun culture around the mid- 20th century, shortly before the state of gun politics captured Hofstadter’s attention.

Firearm estimates derived from gun sales and surveys indicate that, in 1945, there were somewhere around 45 million guns in the US at a time when the country had 140 million people. A quarter-century later, by 1970, the number of guns doubled , whereas the population increased by a little less than 50 per cent. By 2020, the number of guns had skyrocketed to nearly tenfold of its 1945 rate, while the population grew less than 2.5 times the 1945 number.

From the mid-20th century to today, guns also changed from playing a relatively minor role in US crime to taking centre-stage. Research by the criminologist Martin Wolfgang on Philadelphia’s homicide patterns from 1948 to 1952 reveals that only 33 per cent of the city’s homicides involved a firearm. Today, 91 per cent of homicides in Philadelphia feature a gun. Similarly, the national firearm homicide rate is 81 per cent . In addition, opinion polls traced the evolution over the second half of the 20th century from Americans buying guns primarily for hunting and recreation to buying them for self-protection against other people. Together, these findings reveal a sea change in US gun culture between the mid- 20th century and the present day.

US law prohibits the federal government from keeping a gun registry

So, how did this change happen? Until recently, it’s been difficult to say. The paucity of historical data on gun availability has left the origins of the country’s exceptional gun culture a mystery.

The US lacks a national gun registry, which is what most other countries use to count their gun supply. Yet, gun registration has been a hotly contested issue among US gun owners, who are concerned that state-mandated registration is a precursor to state-sponsored confiscation. Even though gun registries have been shown to reduce gun deaths, US law – specifically, the 1986 Firearm Owners’ Protection Act passed under the then president Ronald Reagan – prohibits the federal government from keeping a registry. As of today, only six US states maintain gun registries.

Without a national gun registry, researchers have had to rely on surveys and gun proxies to investigate trends related to gun availability in the US. Most of our existing data on gun prevalence comes from a few questions on the General Social Survey (GSS), which began asking US households whether they own guns in 1973 and has continued asking them every other year since. Due to its consistency over time and its nationally representative sample, the GSS is considered the gold standard of gun ownership data. It’s also been used to validate proxies for gun ownership that provide better estimates at local and state levels. Some of the most commonly used gun proxies come from hunting licences and Guns & Ammo magazine subscriptions per county, as well as the percentage of suicides with firearms per state.

Annual gun sales give us another indicator of the flow of guns into the country, but since it’s impossible to tell where those guns end up or for how long they’re in use, gun sales provide an imperfect measure of ownership over time. Moreover, gun sales data are consistently available only at the national level, and therefore do not allow researchers to exploit state- or county-level differences to explore how changes in gun ownership are related to other social factors like crime, education and public policy across the country.

It’s no wonder that when a National Research Council committee reviewed the state of research on US guns and violence in 2005, it found that ‘answers to some of the most pressing questions cannot be addressed with existing data.’ The best data available start in 1973 and are ‘limited primarily to a few questions from the General Social Survey.’ As the committee rightly pointed out:

Even the best methods cannot overcome inadequate data … Without improvements in this situation, the substantive questions in the field about the role of guns in suicide, homicide and other crimes, and accidental injury are likely to continue to be debated on the basis of conflicting empirical findings.

In other words, without the right data, even the most basic questions about guns – such as when and how the US came to have so many of them – are untestable and remain susceptible to politicised perspectives and speculative interpretations.

H owever, recent research conducted by Elizabeth Rasich and myself breaks new ground by expanding the data to tackle key questions of gun ownership. Researchers have long used the firearm suicide proxy, regarded as the most reliable indicator of US households with at least one gun, to explore the connection between gun ownership and various issues, including the social costs of firearms, police brutality and mass shootings . Until our newly extended dataset, this proxy was available only from 1973 onward, a time by which the country’s gun culture was already in full swing.

By extending and examining this data for household gun ownership rates – the percentage of suicides with a firearm – we sought to illuminate the enigma of the origins of the distinct gun culture in the US. The key to understanding the inception of this cultural transformation lay in accessing data on gun ownership in earlier decades. While digging in the historical records, we found that the data on firearm suicides go back to 1949, which is the first year the US vital statistics included information about suicides by gun. We hand-digitised the firearm suicide counts for each state and each year from 1949 to 1972, validated the data through a series of statistical tests and, in doing so, created what is now the longest-ranging dataset on state-level gun ownership rates to date.

With the right data in hand, we turned to our next task – making sense of the exceptionally high gun ownership rates among Americans. When trying to figure out when and how the country acquired so many guns, we initially thought the answer may lie in the civil unrest and rising crime rates of the 1960s and ’70s. Instead, we found a trajectory dating back to the mid- 20th century.

Early gun culture was utilitarian, collective and state-directed

Conventional wisdom holds that the ample supply of guns has always been part of the US tradition, with consumer demand steadily meeting it. Hofstadter thought this might have to do with the ‘American historical mythology about the protective value of guns’ as ‘an important counterpoise to tyranny’. Indeed, guns helped Americans secure their independence and expand the western frontier across North America. As many know, the right of Americans to keep and bear arms is, of course, enshrined in the US constitution.

It’s true that guns have been present in the US since its inception, initially serving as tools of necessity in the colonies and on the frontier. They’ve played a key role in American imagination, culture and politics. However, in the past half-century, US gun culture has witnessed an unequivocal transformation. The historian Brian DeLay contends that the idea of a continuous gun culture in the US is a myth. His work shows that early gun culture was utilitarian, collective and state-directed; whereas in the past half-century, the emergence of new gun technologies, such as assault weapons, along with a shift towards self-defensive uses of guns, have come to define contemporary US gun culture. These developments have led gun experts like the sociologist David Yamane to identify the rise of ‘Gun Culture 2.0’ or the ‘culture of armed citizenship’ as a modern phenomenon rather than an endemic national trait.

An alternative explanation for the exceptional gun rates in the US centres on the surge of crime and civil unrest in the late 1960s to ’70s – a period coinciding with Hofstadter’s writing and a national uptick in crime. According to this perspective, the rapid rise in gun ownership rates over the past half-century is a result of escalating crime rates and eroding trust in institutions. This narrative pins the turning point of US gun culture on the spread of urban violence and the fraying of public confidence in government amid the Vietnam War, which encouraged people to put safety in their own hands, or so the story goes.

While an increase in crime and a decline in trust in the US government may have contributed to the surge in gun demand, this can’t be the full story. It’s true that the US gun stock rapidly rose during this period, however historical data from the US Department of Justice indicates that the rate of families reporting gun ownership remained stable or even declined during the 1960s and early ’70s. Moreover, our newly compiled gun ownership data going back to 1949 further challenge this explanation, pointing to an inflection point in earlier decades.

T o understand the real origins of the exceptional gun culture of the US, we needed to look further back in time. Our research reveals a puzzling new trajectory: a remarkable 45 per cent increase in the household gun ownership rate from 1949 to 1990, peaking during 1990. To our surprise, more than half of this rise occurred before 1973, a period previously obscured by the lack of systematic data on gun prevalence. These new data provide a crucial historical perspective, showing that the surge in gun prevalence started before the period marked by rising crime and falling trust. In fact, our measure shows an uptick in gun prevalence beginning in the 1950s, a period defined by low homicide rates and peak trust in government, prompting questions about why and how more households acquired guns during a period of relative calm.

We examined the factors that were most connected to state-level increases in these rates from 1949 to 1990, the decades in which household gun ownership steadily rose and when the exceptional US gun culture took shape. We tested several different variables that could have contributed to this rise – including demographic shifts, rising crime, racial conflicts, changes in education and civil unrest, among others. We controlled for state and year differences within our sample, as is convention in scientific studies on gun ownership over time, to ensure that we weren’t comparing states with other states that have drastically different populations and gun traditions, or that the results weren’t skewed by specific years that were outliers in the data.

They mass-marketed these imported guns to consumers flush with cash

Of all the potential explanations we tested, we discovered that the post-Second World War economic boom and relaxed federal gun regulations most drove the surge in demand for guns. As unemployment rates decreased and incomes increased, firearms – once deemed a luxury or practical necessity – grew within reach for more and more Americans. Simultaneously, cultural attitudes surrounding gun ownership may have shifted, as multiple generations of Americans returning from the Second World War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War became accustomed to owning and using guns.

In his book Gun Country (2023), the historian Andrew McKevitt complements these findings with a rich tapestry of archival evidence. By weaving together gun advertisements, congressional hearings and journalistic sources, among others, McKevitt illustrates that US gun culture is unequivocally modern, specifically emerging post-1945, and from the aftermath of the Second World War and the start of Cold War politics.

Following the global demobilisation in 1945, McKevitt shows, surplus war firearms flooded the US market at dirt-cheap prices. This influx was facilitated by the ‘new gun capitalists’, a group of little-known entrepreneurs who imported and sold these guns to US consumers. They reshaped the US gun industry by establishing a mass market for civilian guns that had limited practical use elsewhere and faced stricter regulations in other countries. Capitalising on the surplus of inexpensive imported firearms, the new gun capitalists learned how to stimulate demand through marketing foreign guns as desirable consumer goods for the everyday American. They mass-marketed these imported guns to consumers flush with cash and eager to acquire these one-of-a-kind war arms from across the globe.

Magazine advertisements for mail-in orders of inexpensive guns targeted new buyers who couldn’t afford the high prices of name-brand US firearms. These ads leveraged the appeal of vintage guns as ‘authentic World War II souvenirs’ from Germany, Spain, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Japan and other war-torn countries. Post-Second World War ads can be found touting guns as among the ‘finest made by the Fascists. Carried by the crack Italian Alpine troops.’ The very gun used by Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate the president John F Kennedy was an Italian rifle purchased from a Chicago mail-order store.

Seeking to safeguard retail prices from this new supply of foreign guns, the US gun industry pursued federal action to curb the unregulated flow of imported firearms. However, the administration of the president Dwight Eisenhower decided that redirecting global gun stockpiles into the US was preferable to them arming communist insurgents worldwide. It was the Kennedy assassination, alongside rising crime rates across US cities, that finally prompted Congress to act. The senator Thomas Dodd introduced a bill in 1963 aimed at restricting mail-order firearms. These efforts culminated in the Gun Control Act of 1968, one of the most significant pieces of gun legislation in US history.

W hen considering explanations for Americans’ unique gun culture, Hofstadter thought that perhaps it emerged from the enduring national idea that access to arms counters tyranny. He was partly right. As the new historical evidence shows, it was post-Second World War economic prosperity, abundant supply of cheap guns, along with increased incomes, that made way for the unique gun culture of the US. Once that gun culture took root, it flourished, helped along by public policy. Hofstadter’s theory is consistent with the fact that the steady rise in gun prevalence from 1949 to 1990 was made possible by lenient regulations, upheld by voters who saw gun rights as a symbol of freedom and the right to self-defence.

With the extended data, we can see that Hofstadter wrote at a key moment in the US history of guns. For much of US history, guns were used mainly for recreation and hunting, but during the Cold War the nation turned towards a new era of gun culture. Hofstadter died in 1970, the same year as he wrote his piece on guns. He did not live to see the transformation in the ethos around gun ownership to one of celebration that carries on to the present day.

Hofstadter believed Americans armed themselves against tyranny from above, but today’s reality is different. Guns, primarily used for hunting and sport in the mid- 20th century, became largely owned for protection against fellow civilians – a reflection of a modern fear, the tyranny of uncertainty from each other.

In a country in which tens of millions of people own guns, public safety becomes a personal responsibility, and so individuals often decide that it is in their best interest to protect themselves by buying a gun. This desire to be protected against those who have guns by getting a gun, multiplied across millions of people, has resulted in an arms race that makes everyone less safe. Historical events along with policy choices have shaped this explosion in gun ownership, leading to a society in which many people have grown to associate guns with a sense of personal security. As a result, we hear all the time about guns being used in shared spaces of learning, worship and leisure.

State intervention to restrict gun availability can make a significant difference

In 1970, when thinking about how personal and political conflicts unfold in a nation with so many guns, Hofstadter asked: ‘How far must things go?’ Now, 54 years later, we can answer his question. In 2021, the US witnessed its highest number of gun deaths ever and, in 2023, its deadliest year for mass shootings. Alarming new trends include the rise of ghost guns – homemade guns made from unserialised parts, making them difficult to trace and regulate – and the increasing prevalence of military-grade automatic weapons in civilian hands. Gun ownership is only increasing, with one in five US households having purchased a gun during the COVID-19 pandemic, and new gun owners diversifying to include more women and people of colour. My friend Charles, a street outreach worker in Chicago who works with violence-involved youth, aptly summarised the situation: ‘The answer to more guns is more guns.’

This cycle of guns begetting more guns risks becoming the norm, unless there is concerted state action to reverse the trend. Research shows that state intervention to restrict gun availability can make a significant difference. By the 1990s, unprecedented crime rates prompted many US states to adopt gun restrictions that resulted in a substantial reduction in gun availability and saved tens of thousands of lives. Moreover, mass shootings in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom motivated their governments to implement commonsense gun regulations, including bans on automatic weapons and requirements for licensing and registration. The success of these interventions offers hope that the current situation is not immutable. However, despite this progress, recent years have witnessed a reversal in both state and federal gun-control efforts. Some states have eased or repealed laws, and in 2022 the US Supreme Court limited states’ ability to restrict gun access. This has likely contributed to the recent surge in firearm deaths, particularly among Black Americans .

Examining US history helps provide insights into the present. The recent spike in gun sales and the easing of firearm restrictions across the US warrant our attention, carrying implications that transcend generations and borders. Guns acquired during the 1990s crime surge have remained in communities with consequences for current generations, and account for one-10th of the life-expectancy gap between white and Black males today. Porous state borders enable the movement of guns from lenient jurisdictions to regions with stricter laws and elevated crime rates.

Today, Americans stand at a critical juncture, facing the consequences of a nation armed against outsiders and one another alike. To tackle this issue, individuals must reject the premise that more guns equate to greater safety. Guns, lasting for more than a century, extend their impact beyond individual households, affecting the collective wellbeing of communities. The prioritisation of individual gun rights in the US over community safety has become a danger to innocents. Americans are locked in a self-perpetuating arms race that makes all of us only less safe. The exceptional gun culture of the US demands a critical reassessment of the nation’s priorities and policies to ensure a safer future – one in which it’s known for something other than guns.

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Guns and public health in the U.S., 25 years after Columbine

May 2, 2024 – Federal gun laws have been weakened, state laws are a patchwork, and the U.S. still has more gun deaths per capita than any other high-income country. But firearms researcher David Hemenway , professor of health policy at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, sees reasons for hope.

Q: It’s been 25 years since the Columbine High School shooting. Would you say gun control in the U.S. has improved, gotten worse, or stayed relatively the same?

A: Gun laws have become much weaker in the United States. In most other countries, when there’s a big mass shooting, it’s a time to examine your gun laws and make them stronger. Australia did that and has been incredibly successful in terms of reducing gun violence. New Zealand did that more recently. The United Kingdom did that. For the U.S., it’s been the complete opposite. At the federal level, our gun laws are now much weaker than they were in 1999. We eliminated the assault weapons ban. We gave the gun industry incredible protections against lawsuits. I don’t know of any other industry that is so well protected against tort liability.

At the state level, some states like Massachusetts have strengthened their gun laws. But the problem is the states with the worst problems, the states that export their guns to Massachusetts and other countries for criminals to use, have weakened their gun laws. There is now permitless carry [laws that allow people to carry firearms in public places without a permit] in more than half the states. There are stand-your-ground laws where you can defend yourself using deadly force not because you have objectively been threatened, but because you feel unsafe. In the last 25 years our gun homicide rate has increased 70%. Our gun suicide rate has increased 33%. We used to be a real outlier compared to all the other high-income countries. We had much higher rates of gun deaths per capita than any other high-income country. Over the last 25 years, our gun fatalities have increased dramatically while other high-income countries on average have reduced their gun death rates. We’re now even more of an outlier.

Q: What are some success stories from taking a public health approach to reducing gun violence? What are some of the challenges to reducing harm from guns compared with, for example, lowering the number of motor vehicle deaths?  

A: One of the things that I’m very happy about is that there’s more understanding about the usefulness of the public health approach. It’s becoming accepted that gun violence is not just a criminal problem and gun suicide is not just a mental health problem, they are serious public health problems.

The broad public health approach is being used more and more. A good example is in suicide. Twenty-five years ago, suicide experts focused on people’s mental health. Why are people attempting suicide? Now the evidence is so overwhelming that every suicide expert understands the importance not only of the why of suicide, but also the how—the means of suicide, the methods—that if there are guns around, it’s much more likely that the person will die in a suicide attempt. So one way to reduce suicide is to make sure that when people are at risk, that they don’t have easy access to highly lethal suicide methods—like guns.

In most of the public health success stories in injury prevention , it’s been about changing the product, not in changing people. It’s hard to change people. The big successes in reducing motor vehicle deaths were not due to getting people to be better drivers—that helped a little, to try to get people to not drink and drive. But the main reasons for the large reductions in deaths per mile driven over the past century are that cars and roads are so much safer now. Unfortunately, by contrast, guns have gotten more dangerous—they’re much more lethal. They can quickly kill many more people. There are many more handguns now than there used to be, as opposed to long guns. And the industry has done little to try to reduce the problem. Indeed, they have tried to prevent scholars from even studying the problem.

Q: What gives you reason for hope?

A: There’s been some good things happening. Data and research can really make a difference. We finally have a complete National Violent Death Reporting System, a system that provides good circumstantial data on every violent death in the United States. We now have information on the circumstances of every suicide, not just the demographics of the victim. That’s really helping us begin to understand what policies and programs can be effective.

For 25 years there was very little funding for gun research. Now there’s more funding by the federal government and more foundations are stepping forward, like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which has provided our group with five years of funding. There are three state governments that are now funding gun research. There are hospitals, like Massachusetts General Hospital, that are funding gun research. Ten years ago, when there was a meeting of gun researchers throughout the United States, we had maybe 20, 25 people show up. At a recent meeting of gun researchers, there were 750 of us.

Until recently, if a student wrote one of their dissertation papers about guns, I would say, this is really good but you can’t make a living doing this type of research. You can’t be in a soft money school [a school in which researchers are funded through grants] and be a gun researcher because there’s no money. So you have to do something else. Now I don’t have to say that. Now I can say it’s possible to actually make a career conducting research on how to reduce one of our most serious public health problems—gun violence.

— Todd Datz

Learn more:

Video: Preventing gun violence: Promising public health approaches , April 9, 2024

Photos: iStock/artas; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

TIME Magazine: Guns in America

Guns in america.

TIME Magazine’s issue on Guns in America features 245 people who share their views and describe their experiences, plus essays from six prominent writers on finding common ground

Guns Have Divided America. Here’s What Happened When 245 People Try to Meet in the Middle

By Abigail Abrams, Melissa Chan and Karl Vick

Gun Control Argumentative Essay: The Definitive Guide

What Is Gun Control?

Gun control refers to the regulation and management of firearms within a given jurisdiction. It involves the creation and enforcement of laws, policies, and measures aimed at restricting the possession, use, and distribution of firearms. The objectives of gun control vary, but they often include enhancing public safety, preventing gun-related crimes, reducing the likelihood of mass shootings, and addressing concerns about domestic violence.

Gun control measures can encompass a range of policies, such as background checks for gun buyers, restrictions on the types of firearms and accessories available for civilian use, waiting periods before obtaining a firearm, and limitations on the number of firearms an individual can own. Additionally, some jurisdictions may implement licensing requirements, mandatory firearm registration, and regulations regarding the storage and carrying of firearms.

Debates surrounding gun control often involve discussions about individual rights, constitutional interpretations (such as the Second Amendment in the United States), and the balance between personal freedoms and public safety. Advocates for gun control argue that it is necessary to curb gun violence and prevent tragedies, while opponents may emphasize the importance of individual liberties and the right to bear arms for self-defense.

Overall, gun control is a complex and contentious issue that involves finding a balance between protecting public safety and respecting the rights of individuals to own firearms.

How to Choose a Topic for Argumentative Essay on Gun Control?

Choosing an argumentative essay on gun regulation involves considering various factors to ensure that your topic is relevant and engaging, allowing for a thorough exploration of the issue. Here are some tips to help you choose a compelling argumentative essay topic on gun control:

1. Define Your Position

• Consider your stance on the issue. Are you in favor of stricter gun control measures, or do you argue for more permissive policies? Understanding your position will guide your topic selection.

2. Consider Current Events

• Look at recent news and developments related to gun control. Timely and relevant topics often generate more interest and provide an opportunity to engage with current debates.

3. Narrow Down the Focus

• Gun control is a broad topic. Narrow it down to a specific aspect or angle that interests you. For example, you could focus on the impact of gun control on reducing crime, the effectiveness of background checks, or the constitutional implications.

4. Research Available Data

• Ensure that there is enough research material available on your chosen topic. Access to credible sources and data will strengthen your argument and provide evidence to support your claims.

5. Consider the Audience

• Consider your target audience and choose a topic that resonates with their interests and concerns. Tailoring your argument to your audience can make your argumentative essay more persuasive.

6. Explore Both Sides

• Choose a topic that allows for a balanced discussion. Exploring both sides of the argument demonstrates a thorough understanding of the issue and can make your argumentative essay more nuanced and convincing.

7. Avoid Extreme Positions

• While it's important to have a clear stance, avoid overly extreme positions that may alienate readers. Aim for a topic that allows for a reasonable and well-supported argument.

8. Address Local or Global Perspectives

• Consider whether you want to focus on gun control at a local, national, or global level. Different regions may have unique challenges and perspectives on the issue.

9. Check Assignment Guidelines

• Ensure that your chosen topic aligns with the guidelines and requirements of your assignment. Check for any specific instructions provided by your instructor.

10. Personal Connection

• If you have a personal connection or experience related to gun control, it can add depth and authenticity to your argumentative essay. However, be mindful of maintaining a balanced and evidence-based argument.

By carefully considering these factors, you can choose a great argumentative essay topic on gun control that allows for a thorough exploration of the issue and engages your readers.

How to Write a Gun Control Argumentative Essay?

Writing a gun control argumentative essay involves presenting a clear and persuasive argument on the topic. Here's a step-by-step guide to help you structure and write your argumentative essay:

1. Understand the Assignment

• Before you start writing, make sure you understand the requirements and guidelines of your assignment. Know the purpose of your argumentative essay and any specific instructions from your instructor.

2. Choose a Strong Thesis Statement

• Develop a concise and specific thesis statement that outlines your main argument or position on gun control. This statement should clearly convey your stance on the issue.

3. Research Thoroughly

• Gather information from credible sources to support your argument. Look for data, statistics, expert opinions, and case studies related to gun control. Ensure that your research is balanced and addresses both sides of the issue.

4. Outline Your Argumentative Essay

• Create a well-organized outline to structure your argumentative essay. Divide it into an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. Each section should have a clear purpose and contribute to the overall coherence of your argument.

5. Write a Compelling Introduction

• Start your argumentative essay with an engaging introduction that introduces the topic, provides background information, and ends with your thesis statement. Capture the reader's attention and set the tone for your argument.

6. Develop Strong Body Paragraphs

• Each body paragraph should focus on a specific point or aspect of your argument. Start each paragraph with a clear topic sentence and provide evidence to support your claims. Use examples, statistics, and quotations to reinforce your points.

7. Address Counterarguments

• Acknowledge and address opposing viewpoints. Anticipate counterarguments and refute them with strong evidence and reasoning. Demonstrating awareness of alternative perspectives adds credibility to your argumentative essay.

8. Use Clear and Convincing Language

• Write in a clear, concise, and persuasive manner. Avoid vague language and ensure that your arguments are logically presented. Use transition words to create a smooth flow between paragraphs.

9. Provide Real-Life Examples

• Support your arguments with real-life examples or case studies. Personal stories, historical events, or current news stories can add depth to your argumentative essay and make your points more relatable.

10. Conclude Effectively

• Summarize your main points in the conclusion and restate your thesis. Avoid introducing new information in the conclusion. End with a strong closing statement that leaves a lasting impression on the reader.

11. Revise and Edit

• Review your essay for clarity, coherence, and grammar. Check for any inconsistencies or gaps in your argument. Consider seeking feedback from peers or instructors to improve the overall quality of your argumentative essay.

12. Format According to Guidelines

• Ensure your argumentative essay follows the required formatting guidelines, including citation style (APA, MLA, etc.). Properly cite all sources used in your research.

By following these steps, you can craft a well-structured and persuasive gun control argumentative essay that effectively communicates your position on the topic.

Gun Control Argumentative Essay Topics

Here’s a list of excellent argumentative essay topics on gun control to use in writing your argumentative paper. If you like any of the topics but have no time to develop them properly in a written form, please consult our argumentative essay writing service .

• Stricter laws could help reduce gun violence.
• Background checks may prevent crimes involving guns.
• The Second Amendment's role in individual rights and public safety is unclear.
• Checking mental health might improve gun control efforts.
• Countries with fewer guns tend to have lower homicide rates.
• Gun lobbyists have a significant impact on making laws.
• Arming teachers may not be the best idea for school safety.
• Gun shows contribute to unregulated gun sales.
• Gun buyback programs aim to make communities safer.
• Community policing could be better for public safety than strict gun control.
• Access to firearms affects domestic violence rates.
• Preventing mass shootings may require more than just gun control.
• Gun control may affect racial groups differently.
• Concealed carry laws may impact personal protection and public safety.
• Smart guns and new technology aim to make firearms safer.
• America's love for guns impacts gun control discussions.
• Deciding on gun laws raises questions about federal vs. state control.
• Gun violence has significant economic costs to society.
• Learning from other countries may inform better gun control approaches.
• Media plays a role in shaping public perception of gun control issues.

Pro-Gun Control Argumentative Essay Topics

Stricter gun control regulations get all the hype nowadays, given the recent events in the United States. It may be a smart choice to examine pro-gun control topics if you want to draw readers’ attention.

• Making background checks universal can help control guns.
• Waiting periods before buying guns may prevent impulsive violence.
• Strict licensing for guns is necessary for public safety.
• Banning high-capacity magazines can reduce the severity of mass shootings.
• Smart gun technology enhances safety and limits unauthorized use.
• Mental health screening should be a part of gun purchases.
• Red flag laws can prevent individuals at risk from accessing guns.
• Understanding public opinion is crucial for effective gun control.
• Gun control is vital in addressing domestic violence and protecting victims.
• Examining the impact of gun-free zones on public safety is important.
• Community policing can help collaboratively address gun violence.
• Reducing accidental shootings involves looking at gun ownership.
• Addressing gun trafficking requires better cooperation between federal and state authorities.
• Gun control is crucial for reducing injuries and promoting public health.
• Connecting gun control with suicide prevention is essential.
• Examining the influence of corporate interests in the firearms industry is important.
• Gun control can be a deterrent, learning from international success stories.
• Banning assault weapons mitigates the impact of military-style firearms.
• Stricter regulations are needed to reduce the economic cost of gun violence.
• Promoting responsible gun ownership laws through education enhances safety and awareness.

Anti-Gun Control Argumentative Essay Topics

Always weigh in on the pros and cons of a certain topic. Although it may seem contradictory, anti-gun control topics can allow the classroom to explore an opposing point of view to understand the counterparts better and maybe come up with interesting conclusions on the matter.

• Individual rights should prevail over stricter gun control measures.
• The Second Amendment protects an inviolable right to resist further regulations.
• Background checks are doubted for their efficacy in preventing crimes.
• Waiting periods for gun purchases are seen as an infringement on personal freedom.
• High-capacity magazines' direct link to mass shootings is challenged.
• Pushback against smart gun technology raises concerns and critiques.
• Mental health screening is criticized for potential stigmatization and privacy issues.
• Red flag laws need to balance safety and individual liberties.
• Skepticism surrounds public opinion on the need for more gun control.
• Gun-free zones are questioned for their role in attracting criminal activity.
• Community policing is favored over strict gun control for addressing root causes.
• Accidental shootings raise questions about individual responsibility versus legislation.
• Gun trafficking solutions should focus on local rather than federal measures.
• Unintended consequences of gun control on law-abiding citizens are highlighted.
• Doubts persist about the effectiveness of gun control in improving public health.
• Corporate influence on gun control legislation deserves a closer examination.
• Skepticism exists about the applicability of international approaches to local contexts.
• The impact of an assault weapons ban on personal defense is scrutinized.
• The economic consequences of stricter gun control are considered unintended.
• Educational initiatives are suggested as an alternative approach to gun safety.

Gun Control Argumentative Essay Example

As we studied what gun control is, why it stirs so much controversy, and what are some great topics to write about, it’s time we analyzed one of the argumentative essay examples regarding gun control. Keep in mind – it’s for your inspirational needs only!

The Gun Control Debate: Constitutional Rights vs. Public and Personal Safety

The issue of gun control has been a contentious topic that has sparked intense debates across the United States. On the one hand, proponents argue for stricter regulations to curb the rising gun violence. On the other hand, opponents emphasize the importance of protecting individual rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Striking a balance between these two perspectives is essential to ensure public safety without infringing upon constitutionally protected freedoms.

The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution states, "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." This amendment has been at the center of the gun control debate, with advocates arguing that it guarantees an individual's right to own firearms for self-defense and protection against tyranny. Any attempt to restrict this right must be carefully examined to avoid violating the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens.

The alarming increase in gun violence in recent years has raised concerns about public safety. Mass shootings, homicides, and suicides involving firearms have become all too common, necessitating a reevaluation of existing gun control measures. Stricter regulations on the purchase, possession, and use of firearms are essential to prevent firearms from falling into the wrong hands and to mitigate the devastating consequences of gun-related incidents.

Implementing effective gun control measures requires finding a middle ground that respects individual rights while promoting public safety. Background checks, waiting periods, and mandatory firearm training are potential measures that can help ensure responsible gun ownership. By focusing on these aspects, the government can maintain a balance that protects both individual liberties and the collective safety of the community.

Addressing mental health issues is a crucial aspect of the gun control debate. Many incidents involving firearms are linked to individuals with untreated mental health conditions. By investing in mental health resources and integrating mental health evaluations into the gun purchase process, society can strive to prevent individuals who pose a danger to themselves or others from accessing firearms.

Comparing the gun control policies of other developed nations can provide valuable insights. Countries with stricter gun control measures often experience lower rates of gun violence. Analyzing these models can help the United States identify effective strategies that balance individual rights and public safety.

In conclusion, the gun control debate is a complex and multifaceted issue that requires careful consideration of individual rights and public safety. Striking a balance between the two is crucial to addressing the escalating gun violence while respecting the constitutional rights of citizens. By implementing sensible regulations, focusing on responsible ownership, and addressing mental health concerns, society can work towards a safer future without compromising fundamental freedoms.

Final Remark

Gun control regulation sparks considerable controversy in the United States due to deeply entrenched cultural and political factors. The country has a long-standing tradition of gun ownership dating back to its founding, with the Second Amendment enshrining the right to bear arms in the Constitution. Additionally, the historical significance of firearms in shaping American identity and the perceived importance of self-defense contribute to staunch opposition to any perceived infringement on gun rights. 

Moreover, the issue is heavily politicized, with political parties and interest groups taking firm stances on either side of the debate. Given its complexity and relevance to contemporary society, students should explore this topic through argumentative essays to gain a deeper understanding of the multifaceted factors at play, ranging from constitutional interpretation and public policy to social and cultural dynamics.

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Gun Control - Free Essay Samples And Topic Ideas

The topic of gun ownership is very relevant in modern society in the United States and is increasingly being discussed at different levels. This social issue has also seeped into educational structures, so students often have to write essays considering this topic.

It’s important to keep in mind some general requirements while writing a research paper on gun control. Amongst others are presenting your opinion about gun ownership, adding a topic sentence to structure your work, and starting every new idea with a new paragraph, you may also consult a specialist to know how to make an introduction, conclusion and outline for gun laws essay.

Get creative and speak up. Tell whether you believe weapons are necessary for defending yourself and being in safety, or on the contrary, you think guns may lead to a high school shooting or other crime and the law should go through a reform. Share if you see any solution — elaborate a thesis statement about gun control to consolidate your beliefs. You can find an argumentative essay on gun control in America to familiarize yourself with the main questions on the issue.

Weapon ownership being a social issue, is quite difficult to write about and is a topic that causes debate. So one should read a sample. For instance, we provide free persuasive essays about gun control to facilitate general comprehension. Don’t forget to take a look at gun control essay examples too before writing one, and a hook for gun rights essay may also be helpful.

The History, Politics, Stakeholders, and Legislation of Gun Control Laws

Our nation needs gun control laws. The United States' inhabitants are slaughtering each other every day, but Congress is doing little to stop this. If we had gun control laws, teenagers wouldn't have access to automatic weapons our army uses. Historically, our nation has done little to restrict the ease of getting these weapons. There are big stakeholders that are anti-gun control such as the NRA who are so big, congress is not willing to disagree with their lobbying firm. […]

Why Gun Control Won’t Work

Society sees guns as a source of violence and evil. Consequently, society believes that there needs to be strict regulations on firearms. However, many fail to realize that enforcing strict gun control is not the solution to the problem. People are very ignorant on guns, and they just speak with the masses. Gun control is such a controversial topic because it isn't stated in the constitution if the regulation and control of guns is constitutional or not. Most people on […]

Pros and Cons of Gun Ownership

Gun control is very controversial issue because all though guns can be used for leisure, they can cause much harm. In reason years, guns have landed in the wrong hands, and as a result many innocent lives were lost. The question we all ask is should more gun control laws be enacted? They say more gun control laws would reduce the deaths, with high compacity magazines should be banned because they turn people into mass murders. The second amendment of […]

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Stricter U.S. Gun Control: Safety Vs. Rights

Gun control means control. It means control for the government and the government starts controlling people says Luke Scott. Guns have become so problematic in the United States and as the year goes by and it is so devastating to hear news about schools, grocery stores and many more places that were involved in a gun-related events. One of the few ways to help improve the problem is that the government should do a psychological screening before purchasing guns to […]

Gun Control in America

Throughout American history, the debate on gun control has divided the nation. Gun control is a difficult subject to discuss. There is so much controversy over guns that it can become difficult to analyze the subject, through an objective lens. Americans today own more guns than ever recorded. The firearm industry has grown tremendously and is estimated to be a thirty billion dollar industry, which is contributing to the countries economy (Hindman, Nate C.). While mass shootings are on the […]

Chicago’s Gun Laws

Year after year, Chicago has had an increase in gun crimes. Chicago has gun laws that seem to be ineffective, therefore there are high crimes rates in the city. Since I have a personal experience that involves having a gun to my head, I believe that gun laws need to be changed to be made stricter because it can traumatize a person. There needs to be a restriction on who is capable of purchasing these times of weapons. In Chicago, […]

School Shootings and Gun Control

Killing people for pleasure or killing people because a person has mental problem should be an issue to look into. Gun control in schools are a dangerous and devastatin. Kids who go through shootings/ anxiety and PTSD. Gun control in schools and why it should not be a law. Gun controls in schools is a big problem and should be addressed by the community and the state. The history behind guns and gun control can be very interesting. Gun control […]

Gun Control – Debatable and Controversial Topic between Individuals and Politicians in USA

Gun control can be a topic that is very debatable and controversial topic in the United States between individuals and politicians. In our society currently, there is a strong movement to strengthen gun control laws. The idea of strengthening gun control laws stem from the number of shootings that have happened recently; however, many Americans seem to be missing the point of what gun control truly is. Gun control is a right given to individuals by the government, but guns […]

Does the U.S. Need Tougher Gun-Control Laws?

The United States holds the title of having one of the highest rate of gun-related deaths in the world. As that number continues to rise, and with the benefits that reap from implementing gun control in America outweighing the so called negative effects, it is no surprise that more and more people have become pro-gun control. Legislation should be passed to permit gun control laws and more regulations on guns to be put in place. What exactly is gun control? […]

Why is Gun Control Still an Issue in Today’s America?

The number of mass shooting in the USA during 2018 has recently risen above 300. By November 9, 1135 people were killed as a result of these mass shootings ( Bonnie Berkowitz, Denise Lu & Chris Alcantara, 2018). These numbers do not even scratch the surface of the problem that is gun violence in the US. Every time a new shooting happens, a debate rises, gun control advocates try to raise awareness, but the conclusion is still the same: there […]

The Importance of Gun Control

Gun control is one of the most battled zones in the United States. There have been legislative issues raised by activists on gun control and other weapons associated with the same matter. Many people have fallen victims of gun violence and activists' movements in America have been battling its control. Statistics show that close to 270million personnel own weapons outside the military in the United States (ProCon, 2016). In order to control this ownership, measures to input strict control over […]

Gun Rights in America

Gun rights in America have been at the focal point of discussion for quite a long time, and this is because hits home for such a significant number of Americans. According to research at the University of Chicago, around 200 to 250 million guns are owned all through the nation, (Cook, 2009). A similar research shows that one in four Americans had possessed a weapon in 2009. Firearms are a vital piece of the wellbeing of Americans, yet the dangers […]

The Relationship of Gun Control and America

With recent events, gun control has been a topic among citizens in the United States of America. So many opinions are being spread from politicians, celebrities, and common citizens. The United States of America has an extensive history with assault weapons. Organizations such as the National Rifle Association have spread messages against gun control which have divided the nation. The current situation in America is not ideal with the number gun-related incidents rising and increase in assault weapon sales. Although […]

Gun Control Legislation

Gun control has been a popular topic of discussion over the last couple of years. The second amendment of the United States Constitution awarded citizens the right to purchase and bear arms. If the individual is licensed, they can carry their firearm(s) on their person. The guidelines to obtain firearms are too lenient. Others have said that heavy firearms are too accessible for public use and has started to affect the quality of life for the people of the United […]

Effects of Gun Control

As the effects of gun control become an increasing topic of current events, it is time that we take the initiative to learn each side of gun control; strong and weak. Stated in the constitution, Citizens have the right to bear arms (2nd amendment, Bill of Rights). This is the major reason there is any conflicting matters to limiting the use of firearms due to inappropriate use. The decision however comes from the citizens themselves; to find a correct solution […]

Gun Control in USA

One of the most controversial political topics in today's climate is gun control. The increasing rates of gun violence has lead to an outcry on both ends of the political spectrum, and has necessitated the need for more legislation and clear laws regarding american citizen's second amendment rights. However, to get the full scope of how these laws have been interpreted over time and how we, as a country, have reached this current crisis, one needs to look towards the […]

Security Enhanced Peace for the Entire Nation

It is the responsibility of citizens in collaboration with the government to ensure that security is maintained by all means possible. The United States is a diversified nation and gun usage has been no news. Owning of guns by citizens irrespective of age has been an ongoing trend. It is evident that security matters and the acquisition of these guns to some citizens in essential. On the other hand, gun misuse cases have been reported from a number of citizens […]

The Early Gun Control Movements

The United States of America has always had a tangled and romantic history with guns, and as the nation owning more guns than any other country in the world, some Americans view gun ownership and violence as a grave social danger. Several organizations and movements have formed in the last two centuries with the hopes of regulating the availability of firearms and limiting the freedom to own firearms. The ultimate goal then and now is to reduce crimes and accidents […]

Gun Control has Many Effects in USA

The United States still has gun rights but we also still have rules to that matter. Gun control always had two vectors: common sense, and and to keep guns from the untrustworthy (pg 28). Some people should not be able to own a gun if they have a bad history for guns or if they have been in trouble for robbery etc... In some situations you may need gun rights such as in school, work, parks etc¦ The United States […]

America’s Debate on Gun Control

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Does Gun Control Actually Control Crime

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Stop Gun Violence

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Why Gun Control and Ban on Certain Guns Will not Work in the United States

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Gun Control in the US

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How Gun Control Affects the American’s Point of View

John R. Lott once wrote, American culture is a gun culture? (Lott 1) . On December 15, 1791 the second amendment to the United States Constitution became a law and made it legal for all people in the United States to own a firearm. However, people have evolved since the 1700's. Today, the news is constantly filled with crime and violence using guns. People are injured from guns what seems along the lines of almost every day. All of the […]

More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws

John R. Lott has written a series of books, three to be exact, all with the same topic. More guns and less crime is the issued discussed. These books provide true evidence and facts on gun control and how it relates to crime. In the latest addition of the series, John portrays American culture to one considered as gun culture. One statistic states that in 2009, one hundred and twenty four million people lived in homes that obtained a total […]

Rethinking Gun Laws in the United States: a Urgent Call to Action

Just from this year, there have been over three hundred shootings in the United States just this year. Having stricter gun laws could reduce the crime rate we have in the United States and the gun violence in not only schools and universities, but also in everyday life. The fact that some Americans aren't concerned with our current gun control laws worries me and is ridiculous that people aren't doing anything about it even after all the shootings. The purpose […]

Common Sense and Gun Control don’t Mix

In January of 2013 President Obama signed 23 executive orders pertaining to guns. Action number 14 deemed gun violence a serious public health issue that affects thousands of individuals, families, and communities across the Nation (Institute of Medicine and National Research Council 12). This directed the CDC to identify firearms' effect on public health. This study focused on a handful of major questions. Two of which were the characteristics of gun violence and risks and protective factors. The study analyzed […]

Mental Illness and Gun Control

Gun Violence relating to Mental Illness and Background Checks Gun Violence is a huge threat to people across America. 'In 2018 alone 46,000 incident of violence with a gun, 11,700 death by gun, and 290 mass shootings were more than 4 people have died each shooting' (Gun Violence Archive). Gun violence is something that needs to be taken seriously and acted upon fast. Background checks are not keeping guns out of the people who threaten us the most especially criminals […]

Gun Violence and Gun Control

Gun violence in America is a never-ending series of tragedy after tragedy, mass-shooting and the one of the constant social problem in United State. Many innocent lives have been taken to gun violence from Sandy Hook elementary, Pulse nightclub in Orlando, 2017 Las Vegas, Columbine High School, and all of that violence has been increasing. The Second Amendment, the right of the people to bear arms, has given the individual to own a gun, but many have abused the power […]

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How To Write an Essay About Gun Control

Introduction to the complexities of gun control.

Gun control is a multifaceted and often contentious topic, making it an engaging subject for an essay. The introduction of your essay should begin by defining what gun control encompasses – including various laws, policies, and public opinions surrounding the regulation of firearms. It's crucial to present the relevance of this topic, especially in the context of current events and societal debates. This section should set the stage for your essay, providing a brief overview of the different aspects of gun control you will explore, and subtly introducing your thesis statement. This groundwork is key to preparing the reader for a nuanced discussion on the complexities of gun control.

Building a Structured Argument

The body of your essay is where you'll develop your argument, which should be clearly outlined in your thesis statement. Whether you're examining the effectiveness of gun control measures, their impact on crime rates, or the constitutional debates surrounding the Second Amendment, each paragraph should focus on a specific aspect or argument supporting your thesis. Use evidence such as statistical data, historical examples, or case studies to reinforce your points. It's also important to acknowledge and address counterarguments. By presenting a balanced view that considers multiple perspectives, your essay will be more persuasive and reflective of the multifaceted nature of the gun control debate.

Exploring the Broader Implications

Beyond the immediate arguments for and against gun control, your essay should delve into the broader implications of the topic. This includes examining how gun control policies affect different communities, the relationship between gun rights and public safety, and the cultural and political factors that influence the gun control debate. Discuss the ethical considerations involved, such as the balance between individual liberties and community safety. This section should encourage readers to think about gun control in a wider social, cultural, and ethical context, providing a deeper understanding of why it's such a persistent and polarizing issue in society.

Concluding with Insight

In your conclusion, revisit the key points of your essay, tying them back to your thesis statement. This is your chance to underscore the significance of the topic and the strength of your argument. Offer a reflection on the potential future of gun control, considering recent developments and ongoing debates. You might also propose areas for further research or suggest ways in which the conversation around gun control can be advanced constructively. A strong conclusion will not only provide closure to your essay but will also leave the reader with lingering thoughts or questions, encouraging further contemplation and discussion on the topic of gun control.

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Handguns have no place in modern society, says author Dominic Erdozain

Erdozain believes gun policy shifted in the 1980s.

Author Dominic Erdozain was motivated to write his book, "One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy," because he felt that there was not enough awareness about gun violence. His book takes readers through a journey of American history, exploring the evolution of gun culture and its significant impact on the nation's values, norms and democracy.

He also stated that a shift in the gun revolution occurred in the 1980s, and that gun policy has shifted drastically in the United States over the last 50 years, from President Richard Nixon's advocacy for a total ban on handguns to President Ronald Reagan's characterization of guns as an American birthright.

ABC News sat down with Erdozain as he analyzed guns and gun violence in America.

ABC NEWS LIVE: Gun violence is an epidemic in our country, one that has divided the nation. In his new book, "One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy," author and historian Dominic Erdozain takes readers on a journey through American history, examining the evolution of gun culture and its profound impact on the nation's values, norms and democracy. Dominic joins us now. Dominic, thanks so much for taking the time and being here to talk about the book, the issue. We really do appreciate it. I'm curious what led you to explore the topic?

DOMINIC ERDOZAIN: I had personal experiences, personal threats, which I talked about a little bit in the book. But mainly the shock of arriving here around, about the time of Sandy Hook and just seeing the devastation caused by gun violence and seeing that there, these huge mass shootings that draw the attention for a while.

And then there's this rumbling, continuation of violence in our communities, causing lockdowns in schools. It happened in my doctor's surgery here in Atlanta last year. And I felt that there just wasn't awareness of either the scale of it or how recent or how new much of it was.

ABC NEWS LIVE: And I totally understand that. I covered Sandy Hook, and that basically shook me, like most people, to my core. Gun policy has shifted drastically in the United States over the last 50 years, from President Nixon's advocacy for a total ban on handguns to President Reagan's characterization of guns as an American birthright. What do you believe contributed to the shift in policy that we've seen?

ERDOZAIN: I think, you know, in the book I try to trace long term, roots in terms of slavery and in terms of kind of a militarized nationalism. But you're right to identify that shift from Nixon to Reagan, because what we get there is a kind of culture war factor where the gun issue becomes one of the kind of carriers of purity on the right, a sort of symbol of being on the right side of a culture war which draws on the Cold War.

And it's almost like for Reagan, a continuation of, the war against the Evil Empire. It's like the home front of that. And once you take guns out of the realm of the practical into this symbolic sphere, or at least invest them with more symbolic value than they ever had before, they become almost untouchable. So yeah, that's the start of the sort of revolution, really, the 1980s.

ABC NEWS LIVE: You write about the Supreme Court's 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which affirmed an individual's right to possess firearms for self-defense. I'm curious, how do you think that decision contributes to what you see as a misinterpretation of the Second Amendment?

ERDOZAIN: Well, it's it contributes because it overturned a handgun ban in D.C. It, so it had an immediate legal effect. It also became the basis of the 2022 Bruen decision. So Heller in 2008 makes the traditionally military right to keep and bear arms the right that was historically attached to serving under authority in a militia. The Heller decision applies that to the individual, but to guns kept in the home. Bruen then applies that to individuals outside the home.

So this is this is a drastic change. And I think that it changes things on the legal level obviously. But I think also there's a kind of acceptance that this is the way it was. Whereas you go back as recently as the first decade of this century and 1990s, people are kind of scoffing at the idea that the right to bear arms in the military, in the, in the state militia has any bearing on the individual. But that's quickly lost.

And I think that's what shocks me, alarms me, most of among liberals as well as conservatives, that people had just given up on that idea. And you get people referring to constitutional rights and and some adopting it rather than seeing it as the very flawed decision, or at least the flawed history in my view, that it was based on.

ABC NEWS LIVE: Dominic, we hear this a lot. In the culture, the only thing if I'm going to get this right, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. I'm curious, how do you think that that has impacted gun control measures, that one particular slogan.

ERDOZAIN: Well, it's such an illusion. I sometimes think that the bad guy is just a good guy who's having a bad day. You know that if you look at the data, the criminology, the sociology and what fascinated me most was the psychology of, really groundbreaking books written in the 70s, one called 'Violent Men,' one, 'Power and Innocence,' and makes the point that it's the good guy that you need to worry about is the good guy who has this sense of righteousness and the willingness to use violence.

Road rage incidents we found out last week have increased. Road rage shootings have increased by 400% in ten years. And I follow a couple of accounts that track these. You know, a guy in a Maserati shoots a young mother with two children in a car over some trivial incident. Now, these are not the bad guys, the criminals that you are warned about by the NRA. These are just regular gun owners.

So I suppose my most challenging chapter is called The Myth of the Law-Abiding Citizen. Well, I just show that the intimate connection between the good gun owner and the violence that we're all suffering. And even if these law-abiding citizens are not committing crimes on an individual level, they're feeding into the narrative and the legitimacy of arms. And that's something that is also accepted to some degree on the left as well as the right.

ABC NEWS LIVE: Yeah. And there were a lot of people after the Uvalde mass shooting, they pointed out there were a lot of good guys with guns, standing around for quite some time. Well, that was happening so that goes to your point. I'm just wondering, after doing all this research and writing this book, where do you believe, what place do guns have in a functioning democracy? Do you believe?

ERDOZAIN: Well, I mean, I appreciate your earlier guest talking about being authentic. And, you know, in a sense, leaning into the, the sort of the non-American heritage and I suppose, you know, I always come back to something Jodie Foster said after one of her movies and she said, 'Look, you know, if the problem is rage, the problem is our fallibility.'

You know, I don't think any living, breathing person should have a gun. So may God apply that to handguns. I don't have any problem with people having shotguns or hunting rifles, which is very much the 20th and 19th century traditions of this country. I do have a big problem with handguns and obviously assault weapons, high capacity, high velocity weapons.

I think they have no place in a civilian society. I, I'm very critical of handguns in the home. I know a lot of people here in Atlanta who have them. And if you look at the data, you look at the statistics, It's the families of those people who are in the greatest danger. So I'm a bit of a kind of purist on this matter. But yeah, I think handguns really don't have much place in a modern society.

ABC NEWS LIVE: Well, Dominic, thanks so much for taking the time, and talking to us. "One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy," is now available to purchase wherever books are sold. Thanks so much.

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Persuasive Essay Guide

Persuasive Essay About Gun Control

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Are you looking for inspiration for your persuasive essay about gun control? You are at the right place!

Gun control is a controversial but common topic for students. But with so many arguments on both sides, students often find it challenging.

However, reading some sample essays can be a good start! 

This blog provides several example essays on the topic of gun control that you can read for inspiration. Moreover, you'll get tips to help you craft your own persuasive essay about the topic.

So let’s get started!

• 1. Persuasive Essay Examples on Gun Control 
• 2. Persuasive Essay Against Gun Control
• 3. Persuasive Essay on Pro-Gun Control
• 4. Argumentative Essay About Gun Control
• 5. Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay
• 6. Persuasive Essay Topics about Gun Control

Persuasive Essay Examples on Gun Control 

Start with these general persuasive essay samples on gun control. They will help you understand what makes a good gun control essay.

Check out these examples:

Persuasive Essay about Gun Control

Persuasive Essay Examples Gun Control

Want persuasive examples on other topics? Check out our persuasive essay examples blog to find samples on a variety of topics.

Persuasive Essay Against Gun Control

Check out these few examples of anti-gun control essays. These will help you understand the arguments of those who are against gun control.

Why Gun Control is Bad

Argumentative Essay Against Gun Control

Check out this short video below on the pros and cons of gun control to find good arguments for both sides.

Persuasive Essay on Pro-Gun Control

Some people believe that stricter gun control laws should be a priority to prevent gun violence. Here are some examples that will introduce you to their arguments in detail.

Why We Need Gun Control Essay

The Pros of Gun Control Essay

Free Persuasive Essay on Gun Control

Argumentative Essay About Gun Control

An argumentative essay about gun control is a paper that looks at both sides of the debate on this important issue. The goal is to make sure that you can support your position with facts, figures, and logical arguments.

Read these argumentative essay examples about gun control to see how it's done!

Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay

Now that you have read some good examples of persuasive essays about gun control, it's time for you to start writing your own paper.

But how exactly do you write a good essay by yourself? Here are some steps you should follow:

Step 1- Research the Topic

Before you start writing your essay, it’s important to do some research on gun control.

Read up on the different arguments and viewpoints on the issue to get a better understanding of what you are discussing. Gather as many facts and evidence as you need.

Make sure to take notes, so you can cite anything you use later.

Step 2- Make an Outline

Having a persuasive essay outline will help you stay organized and on track.

Start by making an outline of the main points you want to discuss in your essay. Then, break it down into subsections with specific facts and arguments.

In short, make sure to create a clear structure for your essay.

Step 3- Take a Stance

After doing your research, decide which side of the debate you agree with. Choose one side of the debate. Decide if you're going to argue for or against gun control. Make sure to choose an opinion that you can defend with logical arguments. Moreover, stay consistent throughout your paper about your stance.

Step 4- Support Your Arguments

When making your arguments, make sure to back them up with evidence. Use data, statistics, and quotes from experts to strengthen your points. In addition, you should use rhetorical strategies such as ethos, pathos, and logos to make your essay more effective.

Step 5- Address the Opposition  

Make sure to address any counterarguments that you come across while researching or writing your essay. This will show your readers that you have done your research and considered both sides of the argument.

Step  6- Proofread and Revise

Before submitting your paper, make sure to proofread for any mistakes or typos. Having a second pair of eyes look over your work can help catch any errors that you may have missed.

Take your time to revise and edit your essay. Make sure that each point is clearly laid out and supported with facts, figures, and logic. This is important to make sure that the essay is compelling and error-free!

Persuasive Essay Topics about Gun Control

Wondering which gun topic you should write about? Here are a few persuasive essay topics related to gun control that you can choose.

• The Impact of Stricter Gun Control Laws on Reducing Gun Violence
• The Role of Background Checks in Preventing Firearms Access for Criminals
• Mental Health and Gun Control: Addressing the Connection
• Gun Control vs. Second Amendment Rights: Finding a Balance
• The Necessity of Banning Assault Weapons for Public Safety
• Why Gun Control Won’t End School Shootings
• The Influence of Lobbying Groups like the NRA on Gun Control Policies
• The International Perspective: Comparing Gun Control Measures in Different Countries
• How Can Gun Control Help Suicide Prevention
• The Economics of Gun Control: Analyzing the Costs and Benefits of Stricter Regulations

Want persuasive topics on other subjects? Check out our list of 200+ engaging and interesting persuasive essay topics to get topic ideas.

To sum it up for you,

Gun control is an important issue that needs to be discussed in our society. The example essays in this blog have helped to show different arguments for and against gun control. In addition, you got some useful steps on how to write a persuasive essay about this topic.

Whether you are for or against gun control, make sure to conduct thorough research and use evidence when writing your paper.

So keep these steps in mind and start writing your own gun control essay today!

If you need further help with your essay on gun control, don't worry! 

Our essay help online can provide you with high-quality custom papers. We have experienced and professional writers who know what it takes to write a powerful persuasive piece!

So, hire our persuasive essay writing service now!

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America’s Gun Culture and Why All 400 Million Guns Have Got to Go

Posted: April 28, 2024 | Last updated: May 7, 2024

A Large Number Of Gun Owners Prioritize Self-Defense

The question is: why do Americans care so much about firearms?

A 2021 Gallup Poll suggests that a significant number of gun owners prioritize self-defense, implying a pervasive fear of potential dangers among a large number of Americans.

Actual Instances That Warrant Using A Firearm Are Extremely Rare

Actual instances where gun owners must resort to using their firearms in self-defense are extremely rare.

According to recent reports, less than 3% of gun owners have actually faced such situations in real life.

The Media Narrative Advocating For Firearms Reform

In the discourse surrounding firearms, numerous media outlets constantly keep pushing a narrative advocating for reform.

However, Fox News stands apart by consistently fostering a narrative that perpetuates a perpetual state of danger and fosters distrust in American institutions.

Paranoia Among People Who Watch Too Much Fox News

Fox News's constant dissemination of alarmist propaganda has led its viewers to develop a distorted perception of reality, thereby, causing them to feel increasingly paranoid.

In rare circumstances, individuals influenced by this rhetoric may even resort to violence against imaginary enemies.

The Rhetoric Being Peddled By Fox News Has Made Things Worse

The dangerous rhetoric being peddled by Fox News has not alleviated existing tensions in the country.

Instead, it has exacerbated them, arguably making the situation worse.

The Culture Of Fear And Alarm Has Led To Many Tragic Gun Accidents

Over the years, the pervasive culture of alarm and fear has contributed to tragic gun accidents. Statistics reveal that a notable portion of gun violence stems from accidents, especially those that occur within household settings.

In cases of public gun violence, innocent bystanders often become casualties of otherwise well-intentioned gun owners. The pervasive atmosphere of tension leads these gun owners to perceive others as threats, even when they pose no actual danger.

Missouri Gun Violence Mishap April 13,2023

Highlighting the ongoing issue exacerbated by Fox News, Newsmax, and the OAN Network, are the events that transpired on April 13, 2023, in Kansas City, Missouri.

Sixteen-year-old Ralph Yarl, an African American teenager, inadvertently approached the residence of 84-year-old Andrew Daniel Lester, believing it to be the location for picking up his twin brothers. Upon ringing the doorbell, Lester promptly opened fire on the boy, injuring him with two gunshot wounds. The incident inflicted head and arm injuries on Yarl. The head injury eventually led to traumatic brain damage.

Upstate New York Gun Violence April 15, 2023

Unfortunately, Ralph Yarl's case is not an isolated incident by any means. Merely two days following the boy's shooting, a young man in upstate New York made the tragic error of mistakenly entering the driveway of an unfamiliar home. Despite realizing the mistake and promptly taking action to reverse out with the other four passengers in his car, it proved to be too late.

While the group was exiting the driveway, the homeowner, Kevin D. Monahan, opened fire on them with a 20-gauge shotgun. The driver's 20-year-old girlfriend, Kaylin Gillis, died in the incident. The entire tragic incident occurred because of a genuine mistake.

Another April 2023 Incident In North Carolina

Another incident took place in April 2023. This time the disturbing event unfolded in North Carolina. A group of children were playing basketball in their neighborhood street when their ball accidentally landed in the yard of Robert Louis Singletray.

Witnesses and neighbors recounted that when the children along with parents approached Singleton's yard to retrieve the ball, he became furious. Singleton then retrieved a handgun and began firing indiscriminately at all the people who were present there. As a result, some individuals sustained minor injuries. A 6-year-old girl and her father suffered serious wounds.

Texas Gun Violence April 18, 2023

On April 18, 2023, in Texas, two competitive cheerleaders, Heather Roth and Payton Washington, were shot by Pedro Rodriguez, Jr. when they mistakenly entered his vehicle, believing it was theirs.

It was fortunate that both cheerleaders survived the attack.

The Problem Persists And Is A Cause For Great Concern

The problem of people intentionally or unintentionally causing harm those who pose no threat persists.

Senseless acts of gun violence stemming from harmless mistakes poses a significant threat not only to society at large but also to people's mental health.

A Small Fraction Of Americans Own Half The Guns In The Country

It is even more concerning that only 3% of all Americans possess half of guns in the country.

Given the widespread occurrence of gun violence, it may seem easier to assume that there were too many gun owners. However, the reality is quite different.

Highly Polarized Perspectives On Gun Ownership

Gun laws in the U.S. are undeniably a highly contentious topic, fraught with endless controversy and debate.

People tend to take highly polarized positions, either being staunchly in favor of or vehemently opposed to firearms. Hence, there is generally little room for compromise in both social and political spheres.

The Topic Of Firearms Is Rooted In The Second Amendment

The root of the entire firearms debate lies in the Second Amendment, which explicitly protects the right to bear arms. Pro-gun activists often cite the Second Amendment as justification for why there should be fewer restrictions on firearms.

However, instead of resolving the issue, the Second Amendment has only deepened the divide between legal and ideological perspectives.

Relaxed Gun Laws In The U.S. Contribute To The Country Leading The Entire Western World In Mass Shootings

While some conservative voices attribute the increase in crime rate to the need for fewer gun restrictions, advocates on the opposing end of the spectrum argue otherwise.

Supporters of stricter firearm laws often emphasize the necessity for enforcing public safety measures. The aim is to reduce not only random gun violence but also to deter criminal activities like mass shootings. The U.S. leads the Western world when it comes to mass shootings, a statistic largely attributed to the country's lenient gun laws.

Urgency For Comprehensive Gun Control Measures

The urgency for comprehensive gun control measures has intensified in the wake of devastating mass shootings.

Examples include the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, where 28 innocent lives were lost. It was predominantly children who died in the incident. In the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, 58 lives people lost their lives.

There Seems To Be No End In Sight

Unfortunately, these tragic incidents show no signs of coming to an end anywhere in the foreseeable future.

A number of similar events have unfolded since the events outlined above occured. Such tragedies take a huge emotional toll and cause societal repercussions surrounding the debate on firearm accessibility and safety.

Need For Additional Legislative Measures

The tragic mass shootings have amplified the need for additional legislative measures. There's a growing call not only to tackle the proliferation of firearms, but also to regulate access to certain types of firearms. There is also a need to strengthen background checks for prospective firearm owners.

Considering the prevalence of mass shootings in the U.S., one might expect the implementation of stricter regulations to be common sense. Unfortunately, the reality is far more complex than what some people suggest.

The Unique Challenge The U.S. Faces When It Comes To Gun Control Measures

Unlike other nations that have successfully implemented strict gun restrictions, the U.S. faces a distinct challenge in the realm of gun control. Gun legislation in the U.S. varies significantly from one state to another, thereby, adding to the complexity of the issue. With different jurisdictions handling guns in their own way, this patchwork of gun laws further complicates the task of effectively addressing and reducing gun violence nationwide.

The division of powers between federal and state governments has resulted in diverging opinions on guns, leading to significant deadlock on the issue. In the arena of the federal government, many representatives have declared that any discussion of gun control is essentially a nonstarter.

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At ‘L.A. Progressive Shooters,’ a gun space for people sick of American gun culture

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At least two hours have gone by in the Pistol 101 class, and no student has fired a bullet or even picked up a gun.

This isn’t a lesson for anyone eager to pull the trigger. Tom Nguyen’s teaching style is patient, aimed at demystifying an object many of his students have spent their lives fearing, even hating.

Something of a leftist firearms whisperer, Nguyen pokes fun at stereotypical American gun culture, mocking “alpha male” behavior and the John Wick film franchise with its video game levels of violence. Owning a gun doesn’t have to define your personality, he preaches, and it doesn’t mean you have to seek conflict.

“Being peaceful,” he says, “is not the same as being helpless, or harmless.”

A wiry longtime martial arts practitioner who sometimes wears his hair in long pigtail braids, the 53-year-old Nguyen plays the role of firearms sensei. But unlike the “gun fu” on display in the Wick franchise, Nguyen teaches form and thought over sudden bursts of close-quarters violence. Lessons often touch on focus and intention.

Among the students paying rapt attention inside a Norwalk martial arts studio is 42-year-old Nikki Shrieves, who wears a sweatshirt with “decolonize” written on the back over and over again, each iteration a different color of the Pride flag.

She trembles slightly as Nguyen places a disassembled Glock on the table in front of her. Nguyen knows why the weapon fills her with dread, so he breaks it down into its components: a spring, a slide, a barrel.

“A gun is a tool to put holes in things,” Nguyen says in his gentle rasp that sometimes takes on a surfer bro affectation.

Gun ownership has boomed in the U.S. over the last several years, including in California.

Among those first-time gun owners are L.A. liberals, and more and more, those rookie shooters seek out Nguyen, who started teaching basic pistol courses in 2020 under the banner “L.A. Progressive Shooters.” He meant that adjective as a beacon to some and a barricade to others.

“You can come as you are, and you don’t gotta bite your tongue and pretend you’re someone else that you’re not,” he says. “I already knew I was turning off the majority of the gun world, but that’s not who I’m here to serve.”

While he rejects what he describes as stereotypical American gun culture — a nationalistic, conservative space with little room for diversity of thought or appearance — Nguyen says he’s also trying to dispel the inherent disgust some left-leaning friends have for firearms.

“It’s always like a dirty secret. I always feel like, before 2020, being a gun owner in liberal progressive spaces was like being in the closet,” he says. “Like you didn’t want people to know you had a gun because you would be judged or looked at a certain way. Like, is there something wrong with you?”

Nguyen did not invent the left-leaning gun group. The Pink Pistols, John Brown Gun Club and the Socialist Rifle Assn. have existed for decades. But those national organizations sometimes come with a slightly militant bent, whereas Nguyen more occupies the role of the lefty gun instructor next door.

Sometimes, Nguyen sounds like a yoga instructor, talking to students about their breathing rhythm as they squeeze the trigger. He’s neither surprised nor bothered when a student breaks down in tears the first time they pick up a gun.

“If you’re nervous, you’re my favorite kind of student,” he says. “It means you’re aware.”

Cognizance of the power of a firearm is a critical part of gun ownership for Nguyen, who is all too familiar with their devastating potential. He’s seen a handgun steal a life. Once, a bullet nearly came for him.

Growing up in Irvine, Nguyen first touched a gun when he was 15. His father’s weapon wasn’t stored properly, not locked in a case, out of the reach of his children. Nguyen said holding the handgun in front of some high school friends made him feel “powerful, just like my movie heroes.”

Right up until it went off.

“To this day, I don’t know how I didn’t shoot my friend,” Nguyen tells his students. “The bullet went over his shoulder and right into the wall.”

Nguyen thinks the weapon was defective — a loose firing pin — and it discharged as he racked the slide.

Years later, Nguyen says, bullets interrupted a meal with his family when a gunman chased a man into a Garden Grove pho restaurant, emptying a magazine into his back. The victim, Thanh Chi Nguyen, would not survive. The shooter, Victor Tuan Nguyen, was convicted of murder. He is not related to either man.

Despite the traumatic events, Nguyen says he continued to “worship” guns. He bought a rifle when he was 18 and would sometimes go shooting with friends and cousins in remote parts of Orange County.

“Guns were so glamorized. It was probably my biggest obsession ... dreaming about guns, drawing pictures of them,” he says.

The child of Vietnamese refugees he describes as “strict immigrant parents,” Nguyen says he had “three choices” when he began at UC Irvine a few years later — “be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer.”

But Nguyen “flunked out,” leading his parents to kick him out of their home. It wouldn’t be long until Nguyen found himself holding a firearm again.

“I’m homeless now. No future prospects. My girlfriend at the time dumped me. So, age 21 ... I finally got to buy my first handgun for my very own personal use,” he says. “And that was with the intention of committing suicide.”

Nguyen wrote a note and knew where he planned to fire the fatal shot. But he also said he ruminated on his legacy, fearing his family would see him as a “quitter.”

A month passed, then a year. Slowly, Nguyen began to process both his depression and the rift that opened up with his family. He got rid of the gun, but stayed interested in shooting, buying a few more weapons and taking lessons at gun ranges from current and former police officers.

Eventually, Nguyen returned to UC Irvine and started selling off his firearms to help cover tuition. He thought he’d “never touch” a gun again, until 2019, when he lost a girlfriend but gained his first student.

He was down to one firearm — a Glock 26 he had kept hidden from his “anti-gun” girlfriend — but after the break-up, Nguyen’s ex planned a long road trip along the Pacific Coast.

Concerned about his ex’s ability to defend herself, Nguyen taught her some pistol basics, taking the same methodical approach his future students would come to know.

The two started going to gun ranges, and Nguyen posted footage of their range visits to Instagram. At the time, Nguyen was running an account for a grassroots marketing team that promoted events run by the L.A. Philharmonic and Hollywood Bowl. With most of his followers based in liberal L.A., he anticipated vitriol.

The first message Nguyen received, however, was a request for a lesson. The potential student was a musician who had just bought a gun for home defense following the at times violent street protests after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

“He grew up in Venice in the ’90s. Drive-by shootings. He absolutely hates guns. But he’s like: ‘Yo, I’m married now. Even though I don’t like ’em, I don’t wanna be the only one not to have one,’” Nguyen says.

From there, stories of Nguyen’s firearms proficiency spread by word of mouth. “Tom shoots guns” became an excitably whispered phrase among friends in L.A.’s local music scene, Nguyen said.

Soon, he was inviting potential students over to his home and walking them through the primordial version of an “L.A. Progressive Shooters” lesson.

The timing was perfect, if bittersweet. While the pandemic had destroyed his business promoting live events, 2020 also happened to be “the year everyone bought guns,” Nguyen says.

That year the California Department of Justice issued roughly 511,000 “firearm safety certificates,” which must be obtained to legally buy a gun in the state; that was more than the department issued in the prior two years combined, records show. The number of registered gun owners in California jumped from 2.3 million in 2018 to nearly 3.5 million at the start of this year.

I was among those new gun owners. In 2021 — after watching colleagues hide from the violent mob on Jan. 6 and remembering I have a habit of writing about angry men with access to weapons — I walked into a Burbank gun store to pick up my first handgun.

The weapon was transferred to me by the man who taught me anything I ever knew about guns, my father.

A National Rifle Assn.-certified instructor and former New York City Police detective, the elder James Queally (though everyone calls him Jim) is as patient a teacher as one could ask for and a stickler for safety, much like Nguyen.

But I could see how the Staten Island, N.Y., gun club where he often corrects my stance and habit of drifting shots low and left during visits home could feel like hostile territory to some of Nguyen’s students, and a less than ideal space for a journalist with a California mailing address. One guy made the sign of the cross when I told him I’d moved to Los Angeles. “Let’s Go Brandon” stickers are visible, and conversations about my profession can get uncomfortable when the range members, many of them ex-cops, realize I often write about law enforcement misconduct.

My foray into gun ownership is part of a larger trend. Last year, a national NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed 52% of registered voters said someone in their household owned a gun, up from 46% in 2019. The share of Democrats who answered “yes” rose from 33% to 41%.

Wanting to improve his firearms skills as he planned to launch his classes, Nguyen said he stumbled into a 2nd Amendment-focused Facebook group that was intended to be welcoming to Asian gun owners.

A few days in that space made Nguyen more certain than ever that he needed to create one of his own.

“It was no different than the kind of attitudes I’ve seen in the rest of the male-dominated gun world. They were right wing. They were conservative. They were homophobic. They were transphobic, misogynist,” he said.

Michael Schwartz, executive director of the San Diego County Gun Owners Political Action Committee, said that while he’s supportive of Nguyen’s mission, he thinks his assessment of the “traditional” gun owner leans too heavily on tropes.

“The stereotype is gone. Firearms, as a hobby, are very common in the Asian community and the Hispanic community, and that’s not who we think of,” Schwartz said. “Growing up, a gun owner was somebody out of ‘Duck Dynasty.’”

In the months after his Facebook misadventure, Nguyen turned to the traditional gun world for training and became a certified instructor with both the NRA and the U.S. Concealed Carry Assn. By September 2020, he launched “L.A. Progressive Shooters.”

Nguyen says he’s averaged about 300 students annually since then, for classes ranging from basic pistol use to proper home defense to obtaining a concealed carry permit.

Among those who might have never picked up a weapon if Nguyen wasn’t around is Nikki Shrieves, the woman who broke down in his Norwalk class.

Shrieves said she got serious about learning about firearms in 2020, unnerved by the violent rhetoric of some of then-President Trump’s supporters and the actions of law enforcement during protests that summer.

“I want to know how to protect myself, to protect the community I live in,” she said. “I know [the police] are not out there to protect me or my community.”

Despite the tough talk, it was Shrieves who began to tremble when Nguyen placed a disassembled Glock in front of her. As he taught the five-student class how to load the weapons with dummy rounds, Shrieves began crying and placed the inert weapon back on the table.

She soon told the class that, when she was young, her uncle was murdered during a carjacking in Koreatown. For the longest time, the guns in her house were a source of fear, a hot stove she was afraid to touch.

“In my head I’m like, ‘What if I somehow make the gun blow up and then I hurt myself or somebody next to me?’” she said.

But by the time she got to the range, Shrieves said, Nguyen helped her work up the nerve to empty three whole magazines into a target. A small victory to some, but huge progress for her.

1. Nikki Shrieves takes aim during target practice. 2. Some of the .22-caliber rounds of ammunition used during the firearms education course taught by Tom Nguyen.

Nguyen trains his students in Burro Canyon, a shooting park nestled deep in the San Gabriel Mountains near Azusa. In the yawning expanse, the only constants are Nguyen’s voice and the occasional thunder of gunfire.

Jasmine Quezada, 32, of Boyle Heights was among those students in the mountains on a windy Sunday. She also sought out Nguyen’s class in 2020, unnerved by that summer’s protests. She began thinking about protecting herself. Her husband owned a firearm, but Quezada hadn’t ever touched it.

“I don’t like having it in my house,” she said. “But it’s much more unsafe for me to not know how to use it.”

After a few minutes next to Nguyen, Quezada’s fear turned to excitement as she felt aware of the “power in your hands, but not feeling it as a weight, but as a thrill.”

Standing just off to each shooter’s left, Nguyen offers gentle guidance on stances and compliments students on shots that hit near the bull’s-eye while telling them to focus on their mechanics rather than the result. When one shooter’s form starts to break down, he advises the student to lower the weapon, take a break, relax. There’s no need to empty the magazine quickly.

When one student appears to tense up with each trigger pull, Nguyen offers advice that could refer to meditation as easily as firearms, urging them to stop anticipating each shot and “let the gun decide.”

The advice worked for Quezada. “You know that there’s going to be a recoil. You can try to prevent it and you can try to brace yourself against it, or you just let it happen to you,” she says.

Despite the political name of the group, gun politics themselves rarely come up in Nguyen’s classes. Some of his students, like Quezada and Shrieves, adhere to classic liberal stances on firearms: They support an assault weapons ban and believe ownership should be strictly regulated. But in a world where Quezada sees her political opposites as increasingly racist and hostile, she’d rather be able to protect herself.

“If I ever have to use my firearm … I want to be able to defend myself, but I also want to be able to defend someone more marginalized than I am,” Quezada said, adding that she enjoys “shattering the illusion” that all leftists are latte-sipping, gun-fearing academics.

“I’m a short, brown Latina who owns a gun, and I like making it known that there are people like me out there,” she said.

Nguyen’s stances are a little more centrist. He rolls his eyes at the arguments most of his friends make in response to mass shootings, correctly noting that handguns kill far more Americans per year than rampaging gunmen armed with assault rifles. He has reservations about gun control legislation, fearing it would be disparately enforced against marginalized communities.

To Nguyen, the journey in his classes is about past trauma, not politics. The moment Shrieves broke down in his class might have been embarrassing at a typical range. In Nguyen’s class, it’s encouraged.

“She’s not the first person to cry in my class. And I’ve cried with some of my students,” he says. The goal is transformation. “Can I help you move past this very painful scary object and see it in a different light?”

More to Read

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Feb. 14, 2024

Don’t bring a moral argument to a gunfight, Jonathan Metzl tells liberals in new book

Feb. 2, 2024

Man whose arrest near L.A. high school led to discovery of weapons arsenal gets 2-year sentence

Jan. 5, 2024

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What Could American-Style Gun Culture Do to Israel?

An armed, internally divided nation is not one that makes peace easily.

As new policies promote civilian firearm ownership in Israel, physician and sociologist Jonathan M. Metzl, who studies gun violence, wonders how it will affect the country. Courtesy of AP Photo/Dan Balilty .

by Jonathan M. Metzl | May 6, 2024

A mong the core Israeli national narratives fractured by the October 7 Hamas terror attacks and the months of war and violence that have followed was the notion that Israel’s ethos on firearms differed from that of the United States.

Both countries were gun-centric democracies, that narrative allowed, but the U.S. was a land of too many guns and too few laws—while Israelis “ trust their state, and don’t fear each other. ”  A common refrain emphasized that “in Israel it is not a right to bear arms, but a privilege.”

I knew this mentality well: Before October 7, I had spent over a decade collaborating with Israeli public health scholars and safety activists to better understand how a country with many guns saw only a fraction of the types of civilian gun deaths we do in the U.S. Partner shootings , homicides, gun suicides, accidental shootings, and mass shootings remained remarkably low , thanks to a web of public-health based laws and policies that seemed enviable, if politically impossible, in America.

Many Israelis received firearm training as part of mandatory military service, but the government banned assault rifles for private citizens and issued handgun permits only after an extensive vetting process.

Effective gun policy reinforced social cohesion. While Americans carry guns based on individualized notions of self-protection, Israelis considered gun ownership a shared responsibility .

Such cohesion was often articulated as being not-the-U.S . When the National Rifle Association sent high-level donors on tours of Israel to promote U.S. gun laws, Israelis widely dismissed the efforts as “American mishegas.”

Like many national narratives, Israel’s gun scripts were always based partially in myth . Armed settlers in the West Bank recklessly intimidated and harassed Palestinians. A robust criminal contraband arms market flourished in smaller cities; the victims of shootings from these guns were overwhelmingly Arab citizens of Israel.

Still, American researchers like me could view Israel’s gun safety efforts as models of successful public policy. I worked with groups like the Israeli chapter of Physicians for Human Rights and Gun Free Kitchen Tables that championed coalition-based community safety and advocated for disarmament in “civil space in Israel and the territories under its control.”

That calculus shifted on October 7. A catastrophic failure of state protection tapped into epigenetic – level fears about being Jewish, vulnerable, and exposed —and changed the nation’s relationship to firearms in ways that have profound and lasting implications.

Prior to the Hamas attacks, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—a nationalistic arsonist once expelled from army service because of radicalism—repeatedly tried to weaken gun permit regulations and ease carry rights, arguing that Israel should “take the good things from the U.S.” when it came to guns, but his extremist arguments failed to gain traction.

After October 7, however, Ben-Gvir and his allies managed to fast track legislation that generated an unprecedented spike in armed Jewish civilians. “Carry a Gun, It’s a Life-saver: Ben-Gvir and His Wife Boast of Dramatic Expansion in Israelis Carrying Weapons” read a headline in Haaretz on October 22. Within weeks , the Netanyahu government distributed thousands of firearms and issued more than 30,000 new carry licenses. Contentious Knesset oversight committee meetings detail ed how dozens of unqualified people—including Ben Gvir’s personal staff appointees—had been granted temporary authority to approve gun license applications.

“They’re handing out guns like candy,” a senior security official told Haaretz . “There’s almost no oversight.”

Rightist politicians invoked the U.S. to support the gun splurge. Simcha Rothman , a member of the far-right Religious Zionist Party, cited Ronald Reagan and the NRA—“Guns don’t kill. People kill”—to promote expanded gun licensing.

U.S.-based gun rights outlets reflexively lauded these developments, which would lead to the distribution of more than 100,000 guns in the West Bank alone.

I t’s understandable why gun sales to civilians spike in times of peril. Guns provide real protection in some instances and the promise of protection in others.

As a longtime scholar of American gun politics, however, I’ve learned that gun safety and security are never as straightforward as the NRA ’s “good guys” versus “bad guys” binary makes it seem. Armed civilians rarely prevent crimes such as mass shootings. Potential security benefits to arming civilians are often counterbalanced by rising everyday gun-related injuries and death.

Gun ownership can make people wary of governments and regulations. I once interviewed a man from Missouri who told me that he was “anti-gun” for the first 40 years of his life before he grew concerned about the “gang crime” he heard about on FOX News. He started carrying one concealed handgun for “protection,” then two, and then he bought several rifles. The man ultimately switched his political affiliation from Democratic to Republican because he worried that liberals would take his guns.

Gun politics can also be tribalizing, divisive , even antidemocratic . After the death of George Floyd, gun sellers played on fears and conspiracies to foment white anxiety about Black violence while at the same time citing concerns about police brutality to market semiautomatic weapons to Black and Latino populations. Pro-gun courts in the U.S. overturn firearm safety laws put in place by voters .

The right-wing Netanyahu government was doing more than adopting U.S. gun laws: It was also adopting a version of the NRA’s divisive playbook.

The Middle East represents a profoundly different context. But as I tracked Israel’s changing gun policies, it appeared that the right-wing Netanyahu government was doing more than adopting U.S. gun laws: It was also adopting a version of the NRA’s divisive playbook . Ben Gvir’s gun policies papered over security lapses, weakened trust in democratic institutions, and exacerbated existing political and social divides.

For instance, Israeli data had shown that shockingly few terror attacks are stopped by civilians with guns. Still, the Netanyahu government relaxed regulations around shooting other people based on American-style stand-your-ground justice, and doubled down even after civilians were shot and killed in “ crossfire ” shootouts.

Disproportionate numbers of the newly distributed guns ended up in the hands of supporters of Netanyahu’s conservative/religious coalition. Armed Jewish security squads formed in so-called “mixed cities” where both Jewish and Palestinian Israeli citizens live. Armed violence against Palestinians also escalated in the occupied West Bank—where members of Jewish settler groups had long been allowed to carry weapons, while Palestinians had not.

W hat does it mean for a nation whose guiding health principles were built on social-democratic solidarity to so rapidly adopt American-style armed individualism ?

After October 7, I started asking my former collaborators—leftist Israeli Jewish and Palestinian clinicians, advocates, journalists, organizers, and academics.

“We’ve been attacked,” many told me in the fall, shattered by the violence and the plight of hostages; they understood the desire for firearms. At the same time, no one could believe how many guns flooded in. “People we never imagined are lining up for permits and carrying guns,” one activist said during a group Zoom conversation. Others on the call chimed in. “My husband.” “My grocer.” “My father-in-law.” “Me.”

Being “like the U.S.” when it came to guns emerged as a source of inquietude. One activist lived in a Tel Aviv suburb a block away from a building that was hit by a rocket. Sirens rang in the background when we spoke; still he wondered, “I keep fearing that once peace does come, with all these guns around, how long will it take until we see our first American-style mass shooting?”

An ER doctor told a story about bickering neighbors holding up guns mid-argument. She asked a question that months before would have been unimaginable: “Do you think U.S. gun safety groups might be willing to take up our cause?”

“What violence is being done in our name?” an activist asked as the human catastrophe in Gaza spiraled over subsequent months.

Meanwhile, Ben-Gvir was arming his own controversial security apparatus on the West Bank and promoting racist notions of Jewish “supremacy.”

Lax gun laws increasingly portended existential threats to the socialist underpinnings of Israeli public health, and broader erosions of civil liberties. A leading peace activist detailed ways that the “gun drive is running roughshod over democratic procedures,” and going hand-in-hand with “rising authoritarianism” and “a trajectory of increasingly violent police responses against anti-war protesters.”

Gun safety groups mobilized in opposition .  “I don’t really think Ben-Gvir wants Israelis to feel safe,” a Palestinian Israeli lawyer explained in late December. “He wants settlers and crazies to intimidate others.”

Gun proliferation that began as a response to an external threat had become an enforcer of expansive internal agendas .

T ensions surrounding Israel’s guns became more divisive over time.

Liberal and secular Israelis had long found common cause with U.S. progressives around matters including racism and reparation , gay and trans rights, climate change , health equity , and regional peace . But by January, as seeming allies abroad protested against not just the war in Gaza but the existence of Israel itself, an Israeli Jewish journalist wondered whether disarmament would become more difficult as the country became increasingly isolated. She worried that feeling “under siege, not just by our enemies and Netanyahu but also by the supposedly liberal, modern people in the West who we thought we were part of” would make it harder for Israelis to imagine or “do peace.”

A safety activist told me in mid-March that “anchoring disarmament of the public sphere to peace would mean placing it in the very distant future…so in our messaging to Israeli gun owners, we now tend to speak about an ultimate transition to relative calm.”

However such efforts evolve, it becomes increasingly clear that the decisions Israel makes about gun proliferation today will go a long way toward shaping the future of the nation.

The country can overturn Ben-Gvir’s disastrous gun policies and begin the hard work of countering their polarizing health, social, and political effects.  Such an approach depends on larger upstream commitments to regional stability , and a renewed commitment to what Haaretz calls “the contract between state and citizen” that lies at the core of democracy and public health.

Or Israel can remain a fortress that—similar to the U.S. castle doctrine—arms itself ever more defensively in anticipation of real and speculative threats.

If I’ve learned anything from studying the U.S., an armed and internally divided nation is a nation less able to negotiate, effectively legislate, or meaningfully compromise.

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The Protesters and the President

Over the past week, thousands of students protesting the war in gaza have been arrested..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

Free, free, Palestine!

Free, free Palestine!

Free, free, free Palestine!

Over the past week, what had begun as a smattering of pro-Palestinian protests on America’s college campuses exploded into a nationwide movement —

United, we’ll never be defeated!

— as students at dozens of universities held demonstrations, set up encampments, and at times seized academic buildings.

[PROTESTERS CLAMORING]:

response, administrators at many of those colleges decided to crack down —

Do not throw things at our officers. We will use chemical munitions that include gas.

— calling in local police to carry out mass detentions and arrests. From Arizona State —

In the name of the state of Arizona, I declare this gathering to be a violation of —

— to the University of Georgia —

— to City College of New York.

[PROTESTERS CHANTING, “BACK OFF”]:

As of Thursday, police had arrested 2,000 students on more than 40 campuses. A situation so startling that President Biden could no longer ignore it.

Look, it’s basically a matter of fairness. It’s a matter of what’s right. There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.

Today, my colleagues Jonathan Wolfe and Peter Baker on a history-making week. It’s Friday, May 3.

Jonathan, as this tumultuous week on college campuses comes to an end, it feels like the most extraordinary scenes played out on the campus of the University of California Los Angeles, where you have been reporting. What is the story of how that protest started and ultimately became so explosive?

So late last week, pro-Palestinian protesters set up an encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles.

From the river to the sea!

Palestine will be free!

Palestine —

It was right in front of Royce Hall, which I don’t know if you are familiar with UCLA, but it’s a very famous, red brick building. It’s on all the brochures. And there was two things that stood out about this encampment. And the first thing was that they barricaded the encampment.

The encampment, complete with tents and barricades, has been set up in the middle of the Westwood campus. The protesters demand —

They have metal grates. They had wooden pallets. And they separated themselves from the campus.

This is kind of interesting. There are controlling access, as we’ve been talking about. They are trying to control who is allowed in, who is allowed out.

They sort of policed the area. So they only would let people that were part of their community, they said, inside.

I’m a UCLA student. I deserve to go here. We paid tuition. This is our school. And they’re not letting me walk in. Why can’t I go? Will you let me go in?

We’re not engaging with that.

Then you can move. Will you move?

And the second thing that stood out about this camp was that it immediately attracted pro-Israel counterprotesters.

And what did the leadership of UCLA say about all of this, the encampment and these counterprotesters?

So the University of California’s approach was pretty unique. They had a really hands-off approach. And they allowed the pro-Palestinian protesters to set up an encampment. They allowed the counterprotesters to happen. I mean, this is a public university, so anyone who wants to can just enter the campus.

So when do things start to escalate?

So there were definitely fights and scuffles through the weekend. But a turning point was really Sunday —

[SINGING IN HEBREW]:

— when this group called the Israeli American Council, they’re a nonprofit organization, organized a rally on campus. The Israeli American Council has really been against these pro-Palestinian protests. They say that they’re antisemitic. So this nonprofit group sets up a stage with a screen really just a few yards from the pro-Palestinian encampment.

We are grateful that this past Friday, the University of California, stated that they will continue to oppose any calls for boycott and divestment from Israel!

[PROTESTERS CHEERING]

And they host speakers and they held prayers.

Jewish students, you’re not alone! Oh, you’re not alone! We are right here with you! And we’re right here with you in until —

[WORDLESS SINGING]:

And then lots of other people start showing up. And the proximity between protesters and counterprotesters and even some agitators, makes it really clear that something was about to happen.

And what was that? What ended up happening?

On Monday night, a group of about 60 counterprotesters tried to breach the encampment there. And the campus police had to break it up. And things escalated again on Tuesday.

They stormed the barricades and it’s a complete riot.

[PROTESTER SHOUTING]:

Put it down! Put it down! Put it down!

I went to report on what happened just a few hours after it ended.

And I spoke to a lot of protesters. And I met one demonstrator, Marie.

Yeah, my first name is Marie. M-A-R-I-E. Last name, Salem.

And Marie described what happened.

So can you just tell me a little bit about what happened last night?

Last night, we were approached by over a hundred counterprotesters who were very mobilized and ready to break into camp. They proceeded to try to breach our barricades extremely violently.

Marie said it started getting out of hand when counterprotesters started setting off fireworks towards the camp.

They had bear spray. They had Mace. They were throwing wood and spears. Throwing water bottles, continuing fireworks.

So she said that they were terrified. It was just all hands on deck. Everyone was guarding the barricades.

Every time someone experienced the bear spray or Mace or was hit and bleeding, we had some medics in the front line. And then we had people —

And they said that they were just trying to take care of people who were injured.

I mean, at any given moment, there was 5 to 10 people being treated.

So what she described to me sounded more like a battlefield than a college campus.

And it was just a complete terror and complete abandonment of the university, as we also watched private security watch this the entire time on the stairs. And some LAPD were stationed about a football field length back from these counterprotesters, and did not make a single arrest, did not attempt to stop any violence, did not attempt to get in between the two groups. No attempt.

I should say, I spoke to a state authorities and eyewitnesses and they confirmed Marie’s account about what happened that night, both in terms of the violence that took place at the encampment and how law enforcement responded. So in the end, people ended up fighting for hours before the police intervened.

[SOMBER MUSIC]

So in her mind, UCLA’s hands-off approach, which seemed to have prevailed throughout this entire period, ends up being way too hands off in a moment when students were in jeopardy.

That’s right. And so at this point, the protesters in the encampment started preparing for two possibilities. One was that this group of counterprotesters would return and attack them. And the second one was that the police would come and try to break up this encampment.

So they started building up the barricades. They start reinforcing them with wood. And during the day, hundreds of people came and brought them supplies. They brought food.

They brought helmets, goggles, earplugs, saline solution, all sorts of things these people could use to defend themselves. And so they’re really getting ready to burrow in. And in the end, it was the police who came.

[PROTESTERS SHOUTING]:

So Wednesday at 7:00 PM, they made an announcement on top of Royce Hall, which overlooks the encampment —

— administrative criminal actions up to and including arrest. Please leave the area immediately.

And they told people in the encampment that they needed to leave or face arrest.

[DRUM BEATING]: [PROTESTERS CHANTING]

And so as night falls, they put on all this gear that they’ve been collecting, the goggles, the masks and the earplugs, and they wait for the police.

[DRUM BEATING]:

And so the police arrive and station themselves right in front of the encampment. And then at a certain point, they storm the back stairs of the encampment.

[PROTESTERS CHANTING]:

And this is the stairs that the protesters have been using to enter and exit the camp. And they set up a line. And the protesters do this really surprising thing.

The people united!

They open up umbrellas. They have these strobe lights. And they’re flashing them at the police, who just slowly back out of the camp.

[PROTESTERS CHEERING]:

And so at this point, they’re feeling really great. They’re like, we did it. We pushed them out of their camp. And when the cops try to push again on those same set of stairs —

[PROTESTER SHOUTS]:

Hold your ground!

— the protesters organized themselves with all these shields that they had built earlier. And they go and confront them. And so there’s this moment where the police are trying to push up the stairs. And the protesters are literally pushing them back.

Push them back! Push them back!

Push them back!

And at a certain point, dozens of the police officers who were there, basically just turn around and leave.

So how does this eventually come to an end?

So at a certain point, the police push in again. Most of the conflict is centered at the front of these barricades. And the police just start tearing them apart.

[METAL CLANGING]

[CLAMORING]

They removed the front barricade. And in its place is this group of protesters who have linked arms and they’re hanging on to each other. And the police are trying to pull protesters one by one away from this group.

He’s just a student! Back off!

But they’re having a really hard time because there’s so many protesters. And they’re all just hanging on to each other.

We’re moving back now.

So at a certain point, one of the police officers started firing something into the crowd. We don’t exactly know what it was. But it really spooked the protesters.

Stop shooting at kids! Fuck you! Fuck them!

They started falling back. Everyone was really scared. The protesters were yelling, don’t shoot us. And at that point, the police just stormed the camp.

Get back. Get back.

Back up now!

And so after about four hours of this, the police pushed the protesters out of the encampment. They had arrested about 200 protesters. And this was finally over.

And I’m just curious, Jonathan, because you’re standing right there, you are bearing witness to this all, what you were thinking, what your impressions of this were.

I mean, I was stunned. These are mostly teenagers. This is a college campus, an institution of higher learning. And what I saw in front of me looked like a war zone.

[TENSE MUSIC]

The massive barricade, the police coming in with riot gear, and all this violence was happening in front of these red brick buildings that are famous for symbolizing a really open college campus. And everything about it was just totally surreal.

Well, Jonathan, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Thanks, Michael.

We’ll be right back.

Peter, around 10:00 AM on Thursday morning as the smoke is literally still clearing at the University of California Los Angeles, you get word that President Biden is going to speak.

Right, exactly. It wasn’t on his public schedule. He was about to head to Andrews Air Force base in order to take a trip. And then suddenly, we got the notice that he was going to be addressing the cameras in the Roosevelt Room.

They didn’t tell us what he was going to talk about. But it was pretty clear, I think. Everybody understood that it was going to be about these campus protests, about the growing violence and the clashes with police, and the arrests that the entire country had been watching on TV every night for the past week, and I think that we were watching just that morning with UCLA. And it reached the point where he just had to say something.

And why, in his estimation and those of his advisors, was this the moment that Biden had to say something?

Well, it kind of reached a boiling point. It kind of reached the impression of a national crisis. And you expect to hear your president address it in this kind of a moment, particularly because it’s about his own policy. His policy toward Israel is at the heart of these protests. And he was getting a lot of grief. He was getting a lot of grief from Republicans who were chiding him for not speaking out personally. He hadn’t said anything in about 10 days.

He’s getting a lot of pressure from Democrats, too, who wanted him to come out and be more forceful. It wasn’t enough, in their view, to leave it to his spokespeople to say something. Moderate Democrats felt he needed to come out and take some leadership on this.

And so at the appointed moment, Peter, what does Biden actually say in the Roosevelt Room of the White House?

Good morning.

Before I head to North Carolina, I wanted to speak for a few moments about what’s going on, on our college campuses here.

Well, it comes in the Roosevelt Room and he talks to the camera. And he talks about the two clashing imperatives of American principle.

The first is the right to free speech and for people to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard. The second is the rule of law. Both must be upheld.

One is freedom of speech. The other is the rule of law.

In fact, peaceful protest is in the best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues. But, but, neither are we a lawless country.

In other words, what he’s saying is, yes, I support the right of these protesters to come out and object to even my own policy, in effect, is what he’s saying. But it shouldn’t trail into violence.

Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses —

It shouldn’t trail into taking over buildings and obstructing students from going to class or canceling their graduations.

Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law.

And he leans very heavily into this idea that what he’s seeing these days goes beyond the line.

I understand people have strong feelings and deep convictions. In America, we respect the right and protect the right for them to express that. But it doesn’t mean anything goes.

It has crossed into harassment and expressions of hate in a way that goes against the national character.

As president, I will always defend free speech. And I will always be just as strong and standing up for the rule of law. That’s my responsibility to you, the American people, and my obligation to the Constitution. Thank you very much.

Right, as I watched the speech, I heard his overriding message to basically be, I, the president of the United States, am drawing a line. These protests and counterprotests, the seizing and defacing of campus buildings, class disruption, all of it, name calling, it’s getting out of hand. That there’s a right way to do this. And what I’m seeing is the wrong way to do it and it has to stop.

That’s exactly right. And as he’s wrapping up, reporters, of course, ask questions. And the first question is —

Mr. President, have the protests forced you to reconsider any of the policies with regard to the region?

— will this change your policy toward the war in Gaza? Which, of course, is exactly what the protesters want. That’s the point.

And he basically says —

— no. Just one word, no.

Right. And that felt kind of important, as brief and fleeting as it was, because at the end of the day, what he’s saying to these protesters is, I’m not going to do what you want. And basically, your protests are never going to work. I’m not going to change the US’s involvement in this war.

Yeah, that’s exactly right. He is saying, I’m not going to be swayed by angry people in the streets. I’m going to do what I think is right when it comes to foreign policy. Now, what he thinks is that they’re not giving him enough credit for trying to achieve what they want, which is an end of the war.

He has been pressuring Israel and Hamas to come to a deal for a ceasefire that will, hopefully, in his view, would then lead to a more enduring end of hostilities. But, of course, this deal hasn’t gone anywhere. Hamas, in particular, seems to be resisting it. And so the president is left with a policy of arming Israel without having found a way yet to stop the war.

Right. I wonder, though, Peter, if we’re being honest, don’t these protests, despite what Biden is saying there, inevitably exert a kind of power over him? Becoming one of many pressures, but a pressure nonetheless that does influence how he thinks about these moments. I mean, here he is at the White House devoting an entire conversation to the nation to these campus protests.

Well, look, he knows this feeds into the political environment in which he’s running for re-election, in which he basically has people who otherwise might be his supporters on the left disenchanted with him. And he knows that there’s a cost to be paid. And that certainly, obviously, is in his head as he’s thinking about what to do.

But I think his view of the war is changing by the day for all sorts of reasons. And most of them having to do with realities on the ground. He has decided that Israel has gone far enough, if not too far, in the way it has conducted this operation in Gaza.

He is upset about the humanitarian crisis there. And he’s looking for a way to wrap all this up into a move that would move to peacemaking, beginning to get the region to a different stage, maybe have a deal with the Saudis to normalize relations with Israel in exchange for some sort of a two-state solution that would eventually resolve the Palestinian issue at its core.

So I think it’s probably fair to say that the protests won’t move him in an immediate kind of sense. But they obviously play into the larger zeitgeist of the moment. And I also think it’s important to know who Joe Biden is at heart.

Explain that.

He’s not drawn to activism. He was around in 1968, the last time we saw this major conflagration at Columbia University, for instance. At the time, Joe Biden was a law student in Syracuse, about 250 miles away. And he was an institutionalist even then.

He was just focused on his studies. He was about to graduate. He was thinking about the law career. And he didn’t really have much of an affinity, I think, for his fellow students of that era, for their activist way of looking at things.

He tells a story in his memoir about walking down a street in Syracuse one day to go to the pizza shop with some friends. And they walk by the administration building. And they see people hanging out of the windows. They’re hanging SDS banners. That’s the Students for a Democratic Society, which was one of the big activist groups of the era.

And he says, they were taking over the building. And we looked up and said, look at those assholes. That’s how far apart from the antiwar movement I was. That’s him writing in his memoir.

So to a young Joe Biden, those who devote their time and their energy to protesting the war are, I don’t need to repeat the word twice, but they’re losers. They’re not worth his time.

Well, I think it’s the tactics they’re using more than the goals that he disagreed with. He would tell you he disagreed with the Vietnam War. He was for civil rights. But he thought that taking over a building was performative, was all about getting attention, and that there was a better way, in his view, to do it.

He was somebody who wanted to work inside the system. He said in an interview quite a few years back, he says, look, I was wearing sports coats in that era. He saw himself becoming part of the system, not somebody trying to tear it down.

And so how should we think about that Joe Biden, when we think about this Joe Biden? I mean, the Joe Biden who, as a young man, looked upon antiwar protesters with disdain and the one who is now president and his very own policies have inspired such ferocious campus protests?

Yeah, that Joe Biden, the 1968 Joe Biden, he could just throw on a sports coat, go to the pizza shop with his friends, make fun of the activists and call them names, and then that’s it. They didn’t have to affect his life. But that’s not what 2024 Joe Biden can do.

Now, wherever he goes, he’s dogged by this. He goes to speeches and people are shouting at him, Genocide Joe! Genocide Joe! He is the target of the same kind of a movement that he disdained in 1968. And so as much as he would like to ignore it or move on or focus on other things, I think this has become a defining image of his year and one of the defining images, perhaps, of his presidency. And 2024 Joe Biden can’t simply ignore it.

Well, Peter, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

[UPBEAT MUSIC]

Here’s what else you need to know today. During testimony on Thursday in Donald Trump’s hush money trial, jurors heard a recording secretly made by Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, in which Trump discusses a deal to buy a woman’s silence. In the recording, Trump asks Cohen about how one payment made by Trump to a woman named Karen McDougal would be financed. The recording could complicate efforts by Trump’s lawyers to distance him from the hush money deals at the center of the trial.

A final thing to know, tomorrow morning, we’ll be sending you the latest episode from our colleagues over at “The Interview.” This week, David Marchese talks with comedy star Marlon Wayans about his new stand-up special.

It’s a high that you get when you don’t know if this joke that I’m about to say is going to offend everybody. Are they going to walk out? Are they going to boo me? Are they going to hate this. And then you tell it, and everybody cracks up and you’re like, woo.

Today’s episode was produced by Diana Nguyen, Luke Vander Ploeg, Alexandra Leigh Young, Nina Feldman, and Carlos Prieto. It was edited by Lisa Chow and Michael Benoist. It contains original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.

• May 9, 2024   •   34:42 One Strongman, One Billion Voters, and the Future of India
• May 8, 2024   •   28:28 A Plan to Remake the Middle East
• May 7, 2024   •   27:43 How Changing Ocean Temperatures Could Upend Life on Earth
• May 6, 2024   •   29:23 R.F.K. Jr.’s Battle to Get on the Ballot
• May 3, 2024   •   25:33 The Protesters and the President
• May 2, 2024   •   29:13 Biden Loosens Up on Weed
• May 1, 2024   •   35:16 The New Abortion Fight Before the Supreme Court
• April 30, 2024   •   27:40 The Secret Push That Could Ban TikTok
• April 29, 2024   •   47:53 Trump 2.0: What a Second Trump Presidency Would Bring
• April 26, 2024   •   21:50 Harvey Weinstein Conviction Thrown Out
• April 25, 2024   •   40:33 The Crackdown on Student Protesters
• April 24, 2024   •   32:18 Is $60 Billion Enough to Save Ukraine?

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Jonathan Wolfe and Peter Baker

Produced by Diana Nguyen ,  Luke Vander Ploeg ,  Alexandra Leigh Young ,  Nina Feldman and Carlos Prieto

Edited by Lisa Chow and Michael Benoist

Original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube

Warning: this episode contains strong language.

Over the past week, students at dozens of universities held demonstrations, set up encampments and, at times, seized academic buildings. In response, administrators at many of those colleges decided to crack down and called in the local police to detain and arrest demonstrators.

As of Thursday, the police had arrested 2,000 people across more than 40 campuses, a situation so startling that President Biden could no longer ignore it.

Jonathan Wolfe, who has been covering the student protests for The Times, and Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent, discuss the history-making week.

On today’s episode

Jonathan Wolfe , a senior staff editor on the newsletters team at The New York Times.

Peter Baker , the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times covering President Biden and his administration.

Background reading

As crews cleared the remnants of an encampment at U.C.L.A., students and faculty members wondered how the university could have handled protests over the war in Gaza so badly .

Biden denounced violence on campus , breaking his silence after a rash of arrests.

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The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Jonathan Wolfe is a senior staff editor on the newsletters team at The Times. More about Jonathan Wolfe

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The Times. He has covered the last five presidents and sometimes writes analytical pieces that place presidents and their administrations in a larger context and historical framework. More about Peter Baker

Luke Vander Ploeg is a senior producer on “The Daily” and a reporter for the National Desk covering the Midwest. More about Luke Vander Ploeg

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